


Anecdoche

by perkynurples



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Canon Compliant, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Relationships, Multi, Overarching Lore Obsession, POV Multiple, Shameless Gabriel Reyes Apologia, Slow Burn, to a point anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2018-10-23 14:53:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 44,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10721538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perkynurples/pseuds/perkynurples
Summary: The Recall is where it begins - for some, anyway. For others, this war has been going on for decades, but one thing is for sure - it is far from finished. The mismatched members of the newly reforming Overwatch might face their greatest challenge in something as deceptively simple as finding common ground - and saving the world, as well as facing a past that does not seem to be finished with any of them, seems to be an inevitable part of it.





	1. Recall

**Author's Note:**

> _A N E C D O C H E - a conversation where a lot of people are talking, but no one is truly listening_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> True to its title, this story is told from multiple POVs - right now, we switch between chapters with Jack's and McCree's POVs, and Fareeha's and Angela's. Hopefully it isn't terribly confusing. Canon compliance is a fickle thing to handle, especially where Blizzard's scarce storytelling is concerned, so I do what pretty much everyone does - pick the parts that I like and attempt to mold them to fit. I'm bound to contradict _something_ eventually, or I might also get the entire fic out before they disclose anything more, we shall see :D
> 
> Either way, if you're enjoying what I'm serving, please don't hesitate to leave a comment to let me know what you thought, or come find me at [the blog that I set up](http://anecdocheverse.tumblr.com) specifically for this fic, to chat more! :)

"And you're sure about this?"

"Haven't been less sure about anything in a long time."

They cut a somewhat odd image, even here - a tall man in an almost unnecessarily detailed americanized cowboy getup, from the slightly battered stetson shading his eyes, to the fully functional metal spurs on his boots, and, of course, the sixshooter resting safely in its holster at his hip, all of it softening his otherwise rather stern features; and next to him, a man reborn, metal and biotic mesh fused with what's left of his physical body, the curves of his enhanced limbs, as well as the sword strapped to his back, speaking of a deadly efficiency. A mask with a slit shining an unwavering green conceals his face, and together, the two of them look as if they’ve been plucked straight out of the many posters littering the city nearby, over-the-top movies filled with violence and  _ heroes _ .

And yet, no one bats an eye, they remain perfectly anonymous, crouched on the tall, wobbly stools of this particular noodle stand, blending in with their surroundings effortlessly, as if they've always been here.

"You always did see the best in people," the gunslinger comments, "but who knows, you might be right about him. Either way, some intel would be good."

"Yes," the other man's voice is somewhat muffled by his augmented helmet, but the worry is still perfectly audible. "I just hope he is willing to relinquish it."

"Mmm," the cowboy agrees, slurping loudly on his noodle soup, "I can still go with you as backup."

"I appreciate it, but no. This is something I have to do myself."

"Suit yourself. Man, this ramen is really somethin' else."

"Told you. Enjoy. It's time for me to go."

"Oh yeah, already? Alright then. Best of luck. See you when I see you?"

"Yes," the swordsman agrees, hopping off the stool in one languid movement, and the gunslinger can no longer see that, but just as soon as he ducks into a side alley, he takes to the roofs, quick and agile like a cat, heading swiftly and without a sound to the tall, hostile walls of the compound towering nearby.

"Well, that's that, then," the cowboy announces to no one in particular, alone now, thoughtfully swirling his leftover soup with his chopsticks - to the casual observer, he looks near harmless, just another oversized American with a penchant for dressing up, sightseeing in the wrong part of town.

Of course, spotting the metal plating hugging his torso, and the glint of his intricate prosthetic arm as he lights himself a cigar, might hint to something else, but unfortunately for the group about to enter the ramen stand for decidedly noodle-less purposes, all of that remains unnoticed.  _ Extremely _ unfortunately for them, they do not, in fact, happen upon just any oversized sightseeing American, but Jesse McCree, of all people, here on a largely unspecified personal errand, and in a rather playful mood.

McCree doesn't particularly care if it's a personal vendetta-type situation, or a cold, calculated crime of some other persuasion - what he does care about, is finishing his soup, and thus when the thugs come in guns blazing, quite literally, he only peers at them from below the rim of his hat, the tip of his cigar lighting up like the last ember of a dying fire, briefly illuminating his frown.

The leader of the bunch, and the owner of the esteemed Rikimaru ramen shop enter into a shouting match in very furious Japanese almost immediately, and McCree, since he is the only customer caught in the fray, keeps his head down, that is until he squirms for a more at-the-ready position, and meets with a gun in his face, hissing in indignation.

"Whoa there," he growls, and a clever person would recognize his tone as warning, but it falls flat on the robbers' ears, concentrating their yelling in equal parts on him and the poor terrified cook now, the closest assailant motioning McCree to stand up, gesturing wildly with his gun.

"Alright, alright, jeez. No harm done, yeah?" McCree speaks calmly, rising to his feet ever so slowly, "what do you want me to do, huh? Gun? Yeah, that's my gun. Fine, fine, fine, just hang on, let me just-"

It all happens, quite literally, in a flash - the sonic grenade McCree produces seemingly out of nowhere isn't a particularly strong one, but it does its job well enough, their surroundings cramped anyway. If the robbers were able to see anything but the blinding blaze of light, they'd perhaps note on the unexpected agility with which the gunslinger somersaults behind the counter, managing to draw his weapon, get back to his feet, and drag the poor owner of the shop to the kitchen while firing a number of warning shots, all seemingly in the span of the blink of an eye.

"I thought your noodles were very good," the cowboy offers conversationally, while scanning the room for an exit, "can't really see why anyone would want to shoot you over them, but there ya have it. Any weapons back here? No? Just veggies? Alright."

The short man is trying to explain something to him very frantically, and McCree sighs, adjusting his hat, firing two more shots back into the front room almost as an afterthought.

"Look, it's been a good long while since I've spoken any Japanese, so you're gonna have to be patient with me.  _ Deguchi _ ? Exit? No? Wait,  _ okane _ ? Money? Was that it? Yeah? ...Oh, you're in trouble with the yakuza, aren't you?"

Judging by the man's eyes widening when he mentions the yakuza, McCree decides he's struck gold, which, in this case, is everything but gold, and actually smells of blood money.

"Wonderful," he sighs, reloading his gun with one expert flick of his wrist, "glorious. Alright - no, whoa, hey, hey, hold on! Uhh...  _ matte _ !"

He only so manages to catch the cook by the back of his shirt and pull him back, before an array of bullets sprays the ceiling, lights exploding, fine rubble no doubt descending into the vats of boiling soup around them, the owner wailing in true anguish.

"No, yeah, I know, it's all very dramatic, but you're not exactly - oh."

It was only the speed and the hurry with which it all happened, the noise and the quick thinking on his feet, that has prevented him from noticing up until now - the kitchen connects to another backroom of sorts, and in it, cowering, frozen in perfect shock, is the owner's wife and two children.

"Oh," McCree comments, all but chewing his cigar into a pulp, jaw clenching, "you have a family. Of course."

The media almost beat the police to the scene, both fashionably late, neither particularly interested in anything beyond the publicity - the wailing of sirens and a bit of smoke always look so good on the evening news. Which gives their surprise a particularly sour tinge, because they do happen on some smoke, and a number of broken windows, as well as the very distraught shop owner, but also a group of very sullen criminals with their hands tied, the occasional bruise coloring their faces, stacked neatly together like shrimp in front of the shop, and possibly the strangest dispenser of justice handing them over.

They only manage to snatch one fleeting picture of him before he saunters away, disappearing without a statement or any particular pomp, and it only takes a couple of hours, and a handful of blurry photographs briefly going viral, for him to fondly be branded a vigilante - the citizens of Hanamura do love their colorful mysteries popping out of nowhere.

This particular mystery might lose some of its allure if they saw McCree getting spooked by a stray cat hissing at him in a back alley as he makes his lazy retreat, proceeding to laugh at himself and lighting yet another cigar, but nobody needs to know about that. Boy, does he love a good stand-off every now and then.

His fingers itch still as he checks Peacekeeper over, slowly, methodically - she didn't let him down once, but it was over far too quickly for his liking anyway. There were some cameras, but he won't be staying too long, so that shouldn't be a problem...

He spares a thought for Genji - there's no telling how long that particular... errand will take, but McCree thinks he can safely wait the night, at least. He briefly considers circling back to the mansion, to check and see if Genji has run into any trouble, but then he decides against it - he did promise to trust him, and besides, it all really is very personal.

No, for now, McCree is going to enjoy being a stranger in a strange city, just this once, an ocean between him and his ghosts, and no immediate threats knocking on his door - neither him nor Genji is sure yet whether or not this trip will yield any useful information, but for his part, Jesse is inclined to believe in the best. And if the best ends up being only a damn good bowl of ramen, then, eh, not every day's a victory, now is it.

 

His train of thought is interrupted by some ruckus somewhere behind him and vaguely to his left, his hand automatically darting to his gun - the sound of glass shattering, and yet another angry cat, whining loudly as it skitters away. He hasn’t been paying that much attention to his surroundings up until now, his feet carrying him on their own, but he’s entered a somewhat secluded backyard, nothing but the flashing signs of a shop or two long past closing time, and a twisted sakura tree for company - that is until a figure descends from the roof nigh soundlessly, a quick shadow, far enough for McCree to duck into the shade of the nearest building and remain unnoticed for a precious few seconds.

The stranger is wielding a pretty impressive bow - McCree almost whistles, an actual  _ bow _ \- and looks around somewhat frantically, far-off streetlight only half illuminating his strange attire, the metal plating on his legs, prosthetics perhaps, the half-empty quiver strapped to his back, the long, fluttering ribbon securing his hair.

McCree draws Peacekeeper slowly, circling him quietly, he’s bound to notice him soon... A gasp not unlike all air being punched out of one’s lungs, and the stranger staggers forward, falling on one knee, clutching his chest. Quickly, McCree scans the rooftops for a shooter, but keeps his gun trained on the man before him.

“Now you don’t see that every day,” he mutters, then, louder, “sir? You okay over there?”

The man reacts violently at best, rolling forward while drawing his bow, and McCree only has the time to think,  _ impressive, _ before there’s an arrow pointed in his face, and he’s launching aside to evade.

“Hanzo, no!”

Now  _ that _ is familiar - Genji enters in a blur of green, and before McCree scrambles to his feet, his sword is already at the intruder’s throat, not allowing him one more step.

“I do not want to fight!” Genji sounds desperate, rather than angry, “please listen!”

“Genji, is that your-”

“Nothing you might say to me matters,” the archer retorts, perfectly still, but more along the lines of a predator preparing to leap, than an attacker captured.

“You have always been difficult,” Genji sighs, resigned, and Jesse almost chuckles, before noticing the deadly glare the stranger is scorching both of them with. Right, not the time.

“Do you, uhh... need any help there?” he offers, stepping closer, the archer snarling at him, the arrow moving between him and Genji, able to strike neither, but clearly perfectly ready to try anyway.

“It’s quite alright,” the ninja refuses, “I simply wish to talk. The Shimada-gumi have been acting-”

“Do not speak of the Shimada-gumi!” the archer spits, “the clan lies in ruins, because of you!”

“Because of us both,” Genji reminds him, something akin to kindness in his voice, “but all of that is in the past, Hanzo. There is another threat we must address, and I was hoping we might do so side by side-”

“Impossible!”

It might be a shot, an explosion, it’s difficult to tell - a thousand needles of light temporarily blind them, McCree stumbling backwards clumsily until his back meets a wall, and when his sight clears and his ears stop ringing, Genji is getting to his feet nearby, and the archer is gone, escaped just as easily as he’d appeared.

“Well I’ll be,” Jesse huffs, dusting himself off, “you alright? What the hell was that?”

“My brother,” Genji replies simply, scouring the low rooftops around them, “apologies for the poor introduction.”

“Dunno what you’re talking about, he looked like a real charmer to me. I’m guessing the talk didn’t go so well?”

“Not so much, no.”

“Sorry to hear that,” McCree scowls, patting his pockets for his cigars, “is he gonna be a problem?”

Some tension seems to dissipate from Genji’s shoulders, and he sheathes his blade in one lightning-quick swish.

“No,” he appears convinced, “he will be trailing us from now on, but he won’t shoot to kill.”

“You sound pretty sure, for someone who just had that explosive arrow... thing fired in his face.”

Genji laughs, a short, mirthless sound.

“The road to reconciliation will be a rocky one,” he admits, “but I do believe I will get him to cooperate eventually. Let us head back now, yes?”

McCree stares at the back of his friend’s head for the longest time, but eh, he’s known him long enough to recognize when Genji doesn’t really wish to talk.

“Suit yourself. We’re still going investigating tomorrow?”

“We are. How were your noodles?”

“Uneventful.”

“Somehow I’m having trouble believing that.”

“Passed the cops on your way over here?”

“That I did.”

 

Though they keep their weapons close, they reach their little hideout unscathed, blending in with the busy crowd at the docks - Hanamura is only pristine and peaceful at first sight, and down here, in the sweltering heat and the smell of fish, some of its grace is stripped away. Fortunately, it’s also perfect for the two to go unnoticed, and they’ve managed to secure a small room in one of the shadier parts of what will turn into a bustling marketplace in a couple of hours, but serves as a meeting place for all sorts of unsavory businessmen of... other kinds right now.

“If my assumptions are right, and the Shimada-gumi have started up the business again, and in affiliation to Talon...”

“Can’t say for sure until we check out their operations,” McCree remarks, boots up on the table, while Genji types away at his tablet. “We don’t even know what Talon itself is up to.”

“I do not believe their trail led you here by accident,” Genji counters.

“Naw, yeah, it sure was a nice trick of fate, runnin’ into you again, but I don’t think that has anything to do with any of this...”

“You misunderstand me. I worry this might span further than either of us can reach. The entire world seems to be in turmoil. Look.”

The small, hiccupy TV on the wall comes alight with a vaguely familiar scenery, an ancient clock tower on a backdrop of a European metropolis, and Genji translates the reporter’s Japanese.

“An omnic reformer by the name of Tekkharta Mondatta was assassinated by an unknown assailant last week in... oh.”

“Knew him?” McCree cocks one eyebrow.

“Know someone who did,” Genji replies quietly, “but see, this is my point.  _ Something _ is on the rise, I just know it.”

“Alright, relax, I’m with ya,” McCree stretches his arms high above his head, back arching,  _ and _ aching for a more comfortable bed, “I just have trouble seeing how... oh. Hold on.”

“What is it?” Genji inclines his head, before the tablet in his lap lights up too.

“Huh,” McCree comments, “it’s been a while since anyone’s reached me on  _ this _ phone.”

“Jesse.”

“What? Is it you? Are you butt-dialing me? What...?”

But McCree’s voice sort of gives out on its own when he does manage to fish the phone out of his pocket, and sees the message flashing on its screen.

“Are you...” he exhales, hoarse, barely a sound, “Genji, are you...”

Wordlessly, the ninja raises his tablet for McCree to look at, identical, bright blue letters blinking at them almost fondly from both devices.

“You were sayin’ about something being on the rise?” the cowboy says weakly.

 

-

 

On the other side of the world, a soldier saves a life. She gets in his way, small and fragile and inconvenient, and he saves her. Watches her get home safe. Loses a precious hour, does it anyway.

_ Old habits die hard. _ Inconvenient.

The city is quiet around him, empty streets - nobody wants to go out. He remembers it differently, remembers light, and colors, and music, and a hand in his as they made their way through the crowd. He thinks he’s seeing ghosts, a skull around every corner. Deadly white. But it’s still months to go until the festival; he’s good.

The ziggurats glow a deceptively warm yellow along the shore, and he keeps his distance, and observes. The trail that has led him here is cold only at first sight - the memory of a face, young, scared, in too deep, now looking at him decades later from hundreds of posters around the city, every single TV screen, talking about change. Talking about hope, and brighter tomorrows.

It isn’t difficult to make the connection between the men he’s been following, and the former President’s prized LumeriCo, and he wonders what would be left of those brighter tomorrows had he exposed all that.

But he isn’t here to shed light on the dirty secrets of politicians, not this time around, anyway - no, he’s after intel, and that,  _ Los Muertos, _ The Dead, seem to be willing to provide in spades. They’re an odd bunch - they used to be almost violently anti omnic, but they seem to have shifted their focus in the years that he hasn’t been paying attention to them, and are now acting as self-proclaimed revolutionaries. If he had the time, he’d stick around and watch them take a swing at Portero, but this is not his fight - they’re nothing but a means to an end.

He manages to intercept next to no chatter - this doesn't surprise him at first, every regular Joe has powerful encryption these days, but aside from the grunts in the streets, always too loud and never careful enough, he can't seem to even catch anyone else in the act. Servers are wiped seemingly even before he turns his attention their way, supposed lairs empty save for rats and a handful of empty crates.  _ I just need to talk _ , he wants to make it known, but he can't even begin to approach them - everyone knows they exist, what they look like, but it's like they're everywhere and nowhere, all at once. And like someone is making damn sure they cover their tracks safely.

He first notices it when he finally manages to infiltrate the maintenance building by one of the less guarded ziggurats on the shore. The consoles seem to be working just fine at first glance, but when he attempts to bring one of them to life, to tell him something, he meets with a message flashing in red, too easily mistaken for a simple safety protocol, perhaps, but still.

_ Protocolo de Sombra. _

Shadow. It could mean something, it could mean nothing at all, but at one point, he doesn't have the time to investigate anymore - he hears hurried footsteps outside, and barked orders, and his grip on his rifle adjusts lightning-quick. It is only seconds before he bursts out of the shed, rockets first, that he catches some movement out of the corner of his eye, something on the screen. No longer than two or three seconds, a small, stylised skull in poison purple winks at him almost innocently, but he doesn't get any chance to determine whether it's just his mind playing tricks on him, because he's not alone anymore.

The omnic, he finds later that week, during his latest heist - this one isn't meant to do anything more complicated than raising attention, and yet, it's almost infuriating how little resistance he meets with. The LumeriCo icon beams at him patiently, a stupidly cheerful green, ambient music annoying him in the elevator carrying him to the top floor, and he keeps his rifle trained at the door, but it opens into a perfectly empty corridor, as if someone's been expecting him.

Someone is - the omnic lies collapsed on the ground, among rubble and bullets, nothing but a sizzling shell now. He steps over it carefully, scouting dark corners, making his way to the central mainframe. He is no hacker, but there are certain... tells, signs he has learned to look out for, and if Talon really is involved in any way, he will know. Now, if he could just get a chance this time to take a look...

It's more of a tingle of awareness, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up - he turns on his heel and aims, and in his crosshairs, there is the lifeless husk of an omnic, staring back almost defiantly, its body incapable of even lifting itself up off the ground. Indeed, even the soldier's visor is very clearly telling him there is no life force left in there.

"Looking in all the wrong places, old man," the omnic speaks, its voice more of a distorted crackle, "want me to point you in the right direction?"

Making sure his gun doesn't move an inch, he raises his hand to tap his mask, the part of it covering his eyes sliding away - it hurts almost to the point of tears, he's so unused to balancing out the darkness and the light without the assistance of the visor, but the unnatural purple glow of the omnic's optical units is as clear as day, anyway.

"Who are you?" he demands, and receives no response, past the omnic's half-exposed innards sizzling and crackling - there is a zap, like a fuse blowing, and a puff of smoke, and then the derelict thing is broadcasting a shaky image, like a 3D blueprint, like a...

"What the hell is this?" he spits, "who are you?"

The hologram zooms in, the outlines of the building too recognizable now, and he can even see the familiar symbol on the outer wall, briefly, like a reminder, as if it isn't burned into his retinas until the rest of his days.

"Just go," the omnic beckons him, almost like it's mocking him, and the image disappears, changes into that of a skull, one that he definitely wishes he didn't recognize.  _ It’s a couple months too early for calaveras. _

"To be continued," the tortured heap of wires croaks, until whatever energy was holding it together finally disappears, and its core bursts open in a blinding flash, momentarily dizzying him.

He doesn't stay long after that.

He scouts the place for days - can't be too sure, he tells himself, and avoids actually advancing, going inside, for the longest time.

It's nothing but a skeleton of what it once represented, he knows that, abandoned for years and years, somehow avoiding being repurposed into a warehouse of some sort all this time, but just waltzing inside still feels a bit too... improper. He wants to call it dangerous, but it's not that, not quite. It's the feeling of wandering into a cemetery past closing hours, something heavy and expectant lingering in the air.  _ Why did it take you this long to come back? _

When he finally kicks in the old maintenance door he's discovered, the metal twisted with age and giving way too easily, he listens to the echo of it thumping on the ground for the longest time, dust swirling around his ankles, rifle at the ready.

The entire place is haunted. It's like a shadow out of the corner of his eye, a soft murmur of a sound he cannot identify, a shard of a conversation you hear when you're falling asleep, and can never be sure if it was real, or already belonged to your dreams.

Or better yet, it’s a deja vu - it’s retracing his steps, returning someplace long buried, and feeling... If he closes his eyes, he can almost hear all of them.

He could navigate this place blindfolded, and he thinks he might actually prefer that. His weapon remains trained at every dark corner, expecting ghosts of people long gone to appear around each one.

But everything in here is perfectly silent, and perfectly dead - he knows this. Then why did he even venture in here? He can still recall the omnic's frantically flickering optical units, and far be it from him to blindly chase a simple hunch, but he's been coming up short for too long now.  _ You know what your damage is? You never take a single risk. _

Well, plunging headfirst into unknown danger seems to be the only way to move ahead these days - he wonders if they'd be proud of him.

" _ Welcome back to Ecopoint: Dorado. All personnel are required to sign in with the station computer. Please provide your verification and clearance codes immediately. _ "

That hits him a bit harder than he'd dare admit, and he stops dead in his tracks, and listens for anything, any sign of movement, or the source of the broadcast - he knows full well someone's just toying with him, but as it is, he can't do anything but investigate further.

He passes several flashing screens, with the same mysterious message he'd encountered inside the ziggurat, like breadcrumbs leading him in a single direction. All the other formerly-official buildings he's visited over the years have either been cordoned off or utilized otherwise, and he's never been allowed inside, never left to just... wander.

He pointedly doesn't look at the walls.

The command center is sunken in a stale darkness - that is until the second he activates the flashlight on his rifle, and the lights around him come to life, seemingly all at once, like someone is having the time of their life messing with him. A groan of pain escapes him, and he deactivates his visor hastily.

The computers surround him in a lazy arc, all alive at once, working overtime without him even touching a single control panel.  _ YOU MADE IT JUST IN TIME _ , the text hurries across the screens,  _ WHY DON'T YOU TAKE A SEAT. THIS SHOULD BE GOOD _ .

"Why am I here?" he demands - knows he will be heard.

" _ User Authentication Required _ ," the computer answers him, in a generic ratchety voice, not unlike that of the dead omnic from before.

_ OK, HOLD ON, I GOT THIS _ , the letters dance across the screen almost playfully. A bright purple.

It feels a bit redundant, pointing a gun at a computer, so he lowers it, only half at the ready, and tries to see through the darkness - this used to be a minor base, nothing but monitoring the forests surrounding Dorado ever going on in here, if he remembers correctly. He didn't know anyone stationed here. Nothing of any real value to him now. Still...

" _ User ID incorrect _ ," the computer scolds the anonymous ghost evidently trying to hack into it.

_ OOPS, EMBARRASSING. _

It's there right then, the symbol - a purple little skull, almost overly cheerful, spinning around its own axis, winking at him... Before all the screens around him briefly flash a violent red, and then go completely dark.

"That didn't work out," he comments dryly, not entirely sure why.

A moment of silence, and then the violet letters are back.

_ SORRY ABOUT THAT. GIMME A SEC. _

" _ User ID incorrect, _ " the computer repeats stubbornly, and then: " _ If you wish to proceed, please provide additional biochemical verification. _ "

One of the touch boards before him lights up a far too familiar green, the outline of a hand, beckoning him.

"You think I'm going to risk getting caught now?" he scoffs at his unnamed companion, "here?"

_ ONLY CHOICE, OLD MAN. CMON, I PROMISE IT'LL BE WORTH IT :o) _

He glares.

_ AW HEY NOW, YOU GOT THIS FAR. DON'T BE A KILLJOY. I'LL MAKE SURE NONE OF THIS LEAVES THIS BASE. _

That could very well be perceived as a threat - it probably is one - but he finds he's... oddly past caring. The faceless hacker is right - he never meant to come here in the first place, and yet, here he is. Here he is.

"Fine," he huffs, tugging off his glove - hesitating.

_ IT'S BEEN TOO LONG, _ the screen reads, and he wants to curse at it,  _ what the fuck do you know. You have no idea. _

The touchpad is cool underneath his bare palm, and for a short, breathless moment, nothing happens at all.

Then, a click, the satisfied whirr of a machine  _ recognizing _ .

" _ Welcome back, Commander Morrison. _ "

Maybe he expected... more. Or nothing at all. Maybe he was terrified, all these years, avoiding touching a single console, glancing into a single iris reader, afraid of the system looking, and not finding anything at all. By all rights, he shouldn't even be in the system anymore. It's been ages. There's a grave with his name on it. And then there's the person who led him here, who made him do all this...

_ NICE TO FINALLY MEET YOU, JACK. _

...Who expected this all along.

"Who are you?" he snarls, "what do you want from me?"

_ I BELIEVE THERE'S A MESSAGE WAITING FOR YOU _ , the letters read, refusing to cooperate, and he has half a mind to just up and leave, but yeah, there it is - a small blinking (1) in the top right corner, probably a server-wide thing that popped up automatically when the system rebooted.

His fingers hover over the screen. He'd like to think he's above chasing ghosts, or the promises of ghosts, but the truth is, he's been hoping for something entirely intangible this time - all his years spent digging around Talon and the like, all the Watchpoints he's raided. All the times he could have walked away, but didn't.

He presses the Inbox button.

He doesn't understand what he's looking at, at first - it's just one word, and yet, his brain refuses to process it for the longest time.

"What the hell is this?"

And it is now that his companion chooses to be silent, simply leaving him to his awe. Who could have...  _ Watchpoint: Gibraltar _ , the source of the message reads.

Jack does slump heavily in the nearest chair then, staring at the slowly blinking letters on the screen.They've all had their fair share of spectacularly terrible ideas, but this might just take the cake. Especially now, when former operatives are being killed off, like knocking pawns off a chess board, singled out and hunted, all of that no doubt about to become a lot easier, what with this massive bullseye painted all over their backs.

He should feel angry, frustrated even, but the bland truth of the matter is, sitting alone in a long-abandoned base of the organization that used to be his entire life, Jack is, above all, resigned. There is a war he's been fighting for so long he can't even remember the beginning of it, but he was always prepared to wage it alone, without anyone getting in the way.

_ It's been too long.  _ Entirely too long, and as it turns out, he is completely devoid of sentiment now. He might look into who was stupid enough to initiate the Recall in the first place, for curiosity's sake, but beyond that, he's done. Better off alone, anyway.

_ HEY, _ the screen flickers, interrupting his train of thought almost rudely,  _ PRETTY COOL, HUH? _

"Who  _ are you? _ " he demands again, tired, not really interested in the answer at this point.

_ A FRIEND ;o) _ , all the screens read at once, and the soldier resists the urge to flip them off. Absolutely the last thing he needs right now is  _ a friend. _

-

There is a half derelict, antediluvian computer in the back of a dusty workshop, its wires and various other components strewn all over the desk it's sitting on, like the innards of a gutted animal, and the engineer currently working on it startles and swears in potent Swedish when it comes alive, a single word appearing on its faded screen. He even rubs it, to make sure it's really there, but even though the letters are half distorted, glitching every now and then, there's no mistaking it. He begins packing that very hour.

There is a woman sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor of a cabin hidden deep in a nameless forest, tinkering with a large suit of armor, its parts lain around her in an almost aesthetically pleasing arc, the air smelling bitter with mechanic's oil and grease. The core of the armor comes alive in her hands completely out of nowhere, burning her fingers, and she lets out an undignified yelp and drops her wrench.

"Oi!" she bellows, "message for you!"

"Huh?" The owner of the armor comes into the room back first, holding the door open for himself with his foot as he maneuvers inside with a basket of freshly chopped wood so large he can't sensibly hope to see over the top of it.

A handful of crossed wires, and she brings it up, beaming an entirely unnatural blue, compared to the cozy, warm glow of the fire - he doesn't even hide his tears, sentimental old oaf that he is, and they make sure to leave nothing but firewood behind when they make their hurried retreat the next morning.

There is a doctor who's just about to give up on her day, comprised mostly of procedure after exhausting, routine procedure, shutting everything off in her office, reading the last of the reports designed for her eyes only, when her phone buzzes in her pocket. Automatically, she reaches for her work cell, but quickly realizes it's her personal - and the message, well, it couldn't have reached her any other way, after all.

She squeezes the phone too hard in her hand, simply staring for the longest time, until some commotion from outside jolts her out of her reverie, and she looks on her surroundings with something else than tired fondness now, something closer to contempt.

Her colleague strides inside, seems to find it important to brief her about this or that, but all she can think about from that point on, is the strange, long-forgotten longing unfurling itself inside her.

"Yes, of course, I will do all that," she sighs, distracted and already halfway across the world in her mind, "but after that, I'm taking a vacation."

There is a small, lonely apartment in downtown London, and the message gets there the second she does, literally greeting her as she opens the door. She takes a moment to focus on the screen, but then she dashes to it across the room, and her breath hitches, voice skipping, as she answers.

It's been too long.

There is a singular force, really, driving all of them to abandon their current predicaments more or less without a second's hesitation, and some of them will be more eager to describe it than others. It's a sense of belonging none of them have ever really felt since their world quite virtually went up in flames some years ago. A sense of duty, perhaps, for some. Good old-fashioned excitement, for some others.

But mostly, the relief, that they are not the only ones deluding themselves into thinking that something is going awry - that they're not the only ones to notice. That they are being recalled for a reason. That something is set into motion. And most importantly of all, that there is still room for them somewhere - be they in hiding for whatever reason, or perhaps resigned to their lot in life, only dreaming of the halcyon days now. That the world still seems to have some use for heroes, it turns out.

-

...And then there is a darkness, like heavy fog rolling off the hills into a valley, swirling around the sun-bleached walls of the no-longer-abandoned Gibraltar Watchpoint, until it finds a relatively safe spot, shadows converging, solidifying into the vague shape of a man.

Obviously in pain, the figure leans on the nearest wall, and even the bright moonlight isn't capable of illuminating a whole lot of him.

He spits, gurgles, like an old engine revving up, clutches his side.  _ Damn monkey. _ He looks back at the silent mass of the building behind him, sighs. He can already feel himself fraying at the edges - the blast shook him, without exaggerating, to his very core, and he can no longer quite keep track of... where all of him is, at this point in time. This is something that he is used to, more or less, but if he doesn't fix himself soon, there will be hell to pay. Solid ground slowly disappearing below his feet, he gazes instead at the horizon, and the pale orb of the moon hanging so low above the surface of the sea - something that he remembers, something that can tether him. Something...

The small screen of the loading bay computer comes alive so suddenly right next to him, and he thinks it might be a mistake, at first. But they're like fireflies, in dark corners behind him, in the broad window of the control room itself, screen after screen lighting up with the very same message.

"Well now," he laughs quietly to himself, tapping the screen closest to him almost gently, "this should be fun."

A moment later, he can't hold out any longer, must let go, relax, and the hissing of smoke mingles with the gentle whispering of sea foam deep, deep down below where the waves break on the rocks.

There is a darkness, and then there is light, and perhaps the time has come for all of them to choose which one they actually want to look into.


	2. The Blindness

The stench of frying circuits is a bitter burn on the back of her throat long after the mission is concluded, and the dinner and beer don't help as much as she expects them to.

"So, what?" Saleh gesticulates with his fork, "you smell a conspiracy? What?"

"No, I... Look, all I'm saying is, those failsafes were _bulletproof_ . That AI should have been stripped down to its base components, shouldn't even have been allowed to write the protocol necessary to, to open a damn door. Someone _allowed it_ to break free. To override itself."

"Well, I mean, it was a part of the original God Program, right?" he shrugs, clearly without concern, as long as his noodles are within reach, "you'd expect it to be strong enough to break its own shackles. Or, alternatively, that Overwatch would have built stronger shackles, I don't know."

"But they _did_ ," she groans, then, upon mindlessly watching the cilantro leaves swirling in a slow spiral in her soup for a while, adds quietly: "Or at least I thought they did."

"Yeah. Listen, don't beat yourself up over it too much," Saleh smiles, all encouragement and positivity she finds she can't really respond to right now. "What happened, happened. Anubis is gone now, and we have a stupid-long report left to write - and I believe someone's due a promotion, eh?"

The captain's dying smile is seared onto her retinas, teeth shining white through the deep red of too much blood. _Take care of the team, and it will take care of you_.

She studies Saleh's face, young, round, honest, and wonders what it amounts to, really, that he believes she'd be capable enough to reach higher. And more importantly, if it is something she believes herself.

 

She returns to the temple a couple of days later, to assess, to present - her boss is a steady, albeit unnerving, presence at her side, and it feels vaguely dissonant, the vivid, loud memory of gunshots and rocket blasts echoing off the ancient walls, the ceiling high, high above them; and the silence now, interrupted only by the indistinct chatter of lab techs scattered everywhere like mice in rubble, and the occasional hiss of shifting sand.

"The loss of the tech was regrettable, but necessary," Fareeha reports mechanically, while her boss scans their derelict surroundings, "we weren't able to contain it anymore, it didn't wish to be contained or reasoned with, so we took action."

"I read the report," he nods, expression unreadable, sunglasses firmly in place even here, in the darkness pierced only by the dim glow of a handful of halogens. "What about the loss of human life? Was that _regrettable_ as well?"

A wayward chill dances up her spine - just the temperature here, no doubt, so much lower than the bustling city outside.

"I... of course, sir. The families have been notified. I'm told they managed to save Okoro's memory core, and hopefully it will give us some idea of what ended up... taking control of them."

"Good. I'm glad to hear it. Please see to it that the IT report makes it to my desk, first and foremost. We want to keep this under wraps, you understand."

"We already took the liberty of sending a brief warning to the other facilities containing the larger fragments of the God Program, sir."

Some faint glimmer of sunlight makes it inside, and the reflection of it flashes at her as he promptly glares at her.

"You didn't deem it necessary to inform me about that until now, Lieutenant Amari?"

"I sent the messages myself, immediately following the assault, sir. There are protocols in place regarding a breach of this specific magnitude-"

"Yes, I am well aware of _the protocols in place_ ," he retorts, and she is left staring at him mutely, somewhat taken aback, as he whips out his phone, immediately putting some distance between them, making it more than obvious he is not to be followed.

She's known Osman ever since she was nothing but a rook fresh out of school in Helix, and while she would never go so far as to call him predictable, he does have his... patterns, and this isn't one of them. Something is bothering him, and Fareeha watches him pacing for a while, before deciding to leave it be, for now, and investigate on her own.

The general idea seems to be that... there is none, honestly. Breaking a containment this intricate, constructed specifically to chain whatever's inside for good, was supposed to be impossible, ad yet, here they stand. Some would say that you can't really expect to keep a bad thing alive and then not have that come back to bite you in the ass, but Fareeha knows everything there is to know about these security systems, the failsafes in place, the immense amount of dedicated work it would take to bypass all of that... Who would go to such lengths?

"Yeah, somebody wanted that AI out, no doubt about it," the chief technician confirms her suspicions, overseeing her group of clumsy, mostly indoor-oriented workers with some exasperation. Zahra is yet another long-term associate of Fareeha's, and they currently share a sort of vague bitterness about this entire situation - something is not right.

"It was never supposed to be strong enough to escape on its own," she explains, watching her people like a hawk, "you won't catch me with their posters on my walls, but Overwatch knew how to build a prison. This isn't just some malfunction. There were traces of - watch it!"

A console sizzles violently under someone's hands, a small blast and a puff of smoke, and the chief tech swears under her breath, hurrying over.

"What the hell did you do, pour your coffee on it? Get away from there!"

Some part of Fareeha protests and winces every time someone kicks aside what to them is nothing but yet another rock in the way, but might have immeasurable historical value - she looks up at the ceiling instead, again, and daydreams about pressing a button, the thrusters of her armor carrying her up there, until all the voices subside into a soft hum, and the air becomes colder, light fading out...

It takes her embarrassingly long to take note of the commotion, and she starts in response to her name.

"Lieutenant! Amari! You should really come see this!"

She marches over to where the technicians have gathered into one nervous bundle around a singular console, muttering about _unprecedented outputs_ and _impossible readings_ , and Zahra's jaw is working furiously as she types at the speed of light, some template Fareeha can't pretend to understand.

"Something is still in the system," one of Zahra's fledglings explains nervously, "she's trying to quarantine it."

" _And_ trace it," she grunts, "someone's bad at covering their handiwork."

"Or left it behind for a reason," Fareeha mutters, shooting a glance to where her boss is still in the middle of what appears to be a very disgruntled phone call.

"What are you thinking?" Zahra asks her, tense, eyes never leaving the screen, fingers flying across the keyboard.

"I don't know yet. Something. Osman should see this-"

"Wait."

The urgency in her colleague's voice is palpable, and acting on nothing but pure instinct, Fareeha steps closer, shielding Zahra from sight.

"What is it?"

"Tariq, Salma, start packing up," Zahra orders, her voice changing completely, shoulders stiff, "everyone, count your gear. Start the purge. Go."

"But, boss-"

" _Now_."

They scatter one by one, albeit reluctantly so, and soon it's only Zahra and Fareeha, and the screen is stuck blinking on a chunk of text she can make no sense of whatsoever.

"What's going on?" Fareeha hisses, stepping even closer, "what did you find?"

"Nothing," Zahra replies mechanically, dully, leaning back - she fishes out a small flash drive, dangling it long enough for Fareeha to see, long enough for her to realize she's _supposed to_ be seeing it, before plugging it into the console in front of her.

"Nothing at all," she states firmly - a few more commands, and the screen flickers several times, almost as if it's resisting, but the upload happens seamlessly, at least as far as Fareeha can determine.

"Zahra..." she exhales, and her friend's eyes gleam with an almost unfamiliar resolve when she casts Fareeha a brief glance, from her to the entrance to the temple, where the small, distant figure of their superior is now clearly waiting.

"You free tonight?" the tech asks quietly, and Fareeha follows her line of sight, notices her knuckles whitening, that's how hard she clutches the flash drive after she pulls it out. Far away from them, where the light from the outside forms a gate of gold, their boss waves at them to come over, already.

"...Yeah," Fareeha makes her decision, clutching Zahra's shoulder briefly before they make their way over, "why don't you stop by."

Giza at night is a pulse of brilliant light, a whirlwind of people and noise, but fortunately all that reaches her apartment is the glow, like spilt gold, saturated every now and then by the bright and somewhat annoying red and blue of this or that passing drone or helicopter. If one wishes to sleep in any reasonable amount of darkness here, it is not to be done with uncovered windows, that much is certain.

But rest will continue to elude her for many more hours yet - for now, she awaits each brief waft of the evening breeze lounging on her balcony, sipping on her tea a tad absentmindedly. Even from up here, she can see the shine of the halogens illuminating the ancient walls of the temple of Anubis - a bit ridiculously perhaps, she wishes she'd taken some pictures while inside. It's been closed for public for so many years now, and she still remembers first setting foot inside as a child, looking up, mouth agape in mute awe, her mother urging her on, _go ahead, nothing to be afraid of_.

She hears the faint buzzing of her phone from inside then, and leaves her perch only reluctantly.

 _Staying behind at work_ , Zahra writes, _find me tomorrow. This is big_.

She blinks at the screen once, twice, frowns. Protocol dictates that any and all breaches of that magnitude be handled the only way that ensures history will not repeat itself - they purged what was left of Anubis so thoroughly it wasn't left with enough computing power to turn on a lamp, and yet, her colleague risked a whole lot carrying something away on that blasted flash disk.

She settles by her computer with a grunt, booting it up with a flick of her wrist - might as well go through the documents already forwarded to her, see if her hunch will lead her somewhere, anywhere.

" _Activity on Channel 76_ ," the computer alerts her before she can so much as press a button, and she casts it a suspicious glare.

"76?" disbelief colors her voice, "what could possibly be going on there, now? Uh... fine. Status report."

" _Assignment: monitoring all communication output on the network formerly referred to as the Overwatch Emergency Channel. Activity detected today, October 23rd, 2:34 PM._ "

"Huh," Fareeha comments.

It was nothing but sentiment that made her keep track of those antediluvian, long-unused channels - of course, she tells herself one can never be too wary, too informed, especially when it comes to former half government, half military organizations now deemed outlawed, but the truth lies elsewhere. Come to think of it, probably somewhere in that nervous hitch in her breath when she commands the computer to show her the message in question.

“This shouldn’t be happening,” she says out loud, to no one in particular, but the word on the screen remains, defiant in its simplicity. Like it’s taunting her, _isn’t this what you’ve always hoped for, secretly, somewhere deep inside?_

There is a little girl running around a military base like she rules it, like it belongs to her, letting battle-scarred soldiers carry her around on their shoulders, dreaming that she, too, will carry a handgun and a title everywhere she goes one day... Fareeha isn’t that girl anymore, but she can still hear her calling, always dashing ahead, always hoping for things that her childish naivete prevents her from seeing as impossible.

She traces the signal - Watchpoint Gibraltar. Of course, because what goes around, comes around, and she might as well be getting a handwritten invitation to get nostalgic.

Her first call reaches a long-deactivated line; the second one elicits a dial tone, but no one ever answers. Until _someone_ does, someone confirms that she isn’t just seeing things, this will be too surreal to believe.

She sifts through her old contacts, personal ones, for ages that night before going to sleep - who could she possibly hope to reach, now? Her friends, her... what’s left of her _family,_ have all either disappeared off the face of the earth years ago, or never stayed in touch otherwise. Reinhardt and her exchange letters, out of some leftover sense of duty more than anything else, but that will not exactly give her a fast answer, now will it. Angela is... Fareeha doesn’t want to _imagine_ what Angela would think, hearing from her after so long, and she isn’t too keen on finding out.

No. If she has any hopes of discovering the gravity of the situation, _or_ the truth of it, she’s going to have to _really_ get back in touch, and there is only one person, aside from Reinhardt, that she’s purposefully kept tabs on all these years. _For his own good,_ she likes to tell herself, and thinks he might laugh. Thinks she’d like to hear him laugh, again.

 _Ahlan. Recall?_ , she types, taking care to use her personal phone, and several encryptions that will ensure his safety, more than hers. Still, not allowing recklessness by signing her actual name, she greets him in her native language - she hopes that even after all this time, it will be enough for him to recognize who she is.

Unsure, agitated, she deletes the message several times, groans, defeated, and hits send before switching off the lights and chasing uneasy sleep at last. She doesn’t dare hope for a reply.

 

-

 

Perhaps the oddest thing about returning is the quiet. The perfect, strange, deceptive _silence_ of the compound around her, coupled with the way nothing has quite changed, the way everything looks the same as she remembers it, like everyone just up and left, disappeared off the face of the earth one day. She could just close her eyes and they’d all reappear, marching through the corridors by her side, announcements ringing over the comm, bumping into a dozen familiar faces around every corner. None of that will ever be erased from this place, and it might well be the very reason she has been avoiding lingering, even briefly, in the vicinity of any of the former Watchpoints.

Gibraltar is not where it all started, it is not where she earned her mettle, and it is not where their future went up in flames either, but it is where the end found them, creeped up on them, caught them unprepared, even though they’d known for a while that they weren’t headed anywhere nice.

But to dwell is to suffer, and she did not come back to suffer - hopefully, at least.

The first couple of days, it is only her and Lena and Winston, but then Lena has been around all this time - Angela almost feels awkward, having responded so quickly, having dropped everything to come racing back here. Almost as if nobody else is going to show up, and this will all end up a complete fiasco before it even began. That is the fear that she sees too well in Winston’s eyes, and it gnaws at her as well - especially since he won’t divulge a thing, nothing concrete, _no use repeating it ten times over, let’s wait until everyone gets here._

They need only watch the regular evening news to know that an intervention is sorely needed, now more than ever, but to Angela, bringing back their organization and actually becoming the ones who get to do something about the current state of events, still seems an idea entirely too ludicrous to come true.

And then she wakes one day, from a sleep that can’t be called thorough no matter how she tries to convince herself otherwise, and there are people.

Reinhardt and Torbjorn arrive together, inseparable even after all this time, accompanied by Torbjorn’s oldest, who seems to also be working as Reinhardt’s mechanic these days... And Angela stares at them mutely, completely incapable of moving, of opening her mouth to greet them, until all air is knocked out of her lungs anyway, as Reinhardt envelops her in a rib-crushing hug, and his boisterous laughter reverberates deep into her very bones, and reminds her heart to beat faster.

“You look as beautiful as ever, my dear!” Reinhardt booms, while Torbjorn asks: “Have you been waiting long for us?”, and everyone is talking over one another, and there is more laughter, and jumbled explanations by Winston and Lena both, and Angela can only trot along in a sort of daze, and she wants to tell them, _feels like a lifetime._

“They ran for their lives to get here,” Brigitte tells her discretely while the two old men march ahead of them like they’re on a field trip, loudly commenting on every single nook and cranny of the old Watchpoint, and Angela smiles at her fondly.

“It’s good of you to keep them company, then.”

“Keeping them out of trouble, more like,” she rolls her eyes, and Angela recalls that the last time she saw her, Brigitte was a menace of a child, two braids of bright copper, Torbjorn’s first - and, Angela recalls with much amusement, presumed last back then.

Still, there is no talk of why they are all _really_ here. She knows it’s inevitable, Winston knows it’s inevitable, but for now, they all feel the need to simply occupy the same space, and reminisce, like it’s a reunion dinner, like they are only meeting to catch up, like they are not each desperately chasing the remnants of what once gave their lives purpose.

Torbjorn is in the middle of describing this or that very colorful family story, all of them huddled around one table in a briefing room repurposed into a dining one, when Athena announces another arrival, and they exchange a look that means the same to each and every one of them.

_There aren’t that many left._

They are together, looking appropriately bedraggled, like they've walked all this way on their own, and Angela has about a second to wonder how exactly _these two_ happened to run into each other, before the whirlwind of welcomes begins anew.

"I did, a while ago!" she affirms when Genji asks if she received the letter he wrote her, "you didn't bother including a return address, though, so how was I supposed to reply, exactly? Your master isn't with you?"

"Not for now. Perhaps later. There is something we should-"

"How are you feeling? Is the suit circulating properly? Remember, I told you to care for the vents regularly-"

"Good god, Doc, let the poor guy catch his breath, won't you!"

That's Jesse, and his laughter arrives alongside one strong arm embracing her from behind - she isn't particularly proud of the surprised yelp that elicits, but it is quickly replaced by laughter.

"And _you_!" she turns to McCree, "for your sake, I hope you kicked that filthy smoking habit years ago! You're... missing an arm? Oh, god, Jesse. You're missing an arm."

"Yeah, what're you gonna do," he waves it off as if it's the most normal thing in the world, and she doesn't miss the way he hides the sleek new artificial limb in the folds of his serape, before she can get a better look at it.

"We will talk about this later," she informs him sternly, "what about your eyes?"

"Better than my lungs," he scowls half apologetically, and she squints at him, grabbing his chin, turning his head this way and that. Used to drive him crazy when they were young, and she finds with some pleasure in that it still does.

"Still in place, ain’t they," he grumbles, but her grin mirrors hers, and she can't help but stare.

She hasn't seen him in years, so many of them, and he looks... She means to ask him so many things, needs to know why he left in the first place, needs to make sure he is still in one piece, but can't find the right words, not yet at least. He's like a mirage, back from the dead, the red of his serape still draped around his shoulders, his battered hat, the entirety of him.

"You of all people," she exhales somewhat unsteadily, "I didn't even expect back here."

Something twists his friendly smile for a fraction of a second, but it's gone before she can so much as reassure herself it was ever there.

"You and me both, Doc. But here I am."

And that's that, it seems. McCree looks so much older, but then they all do. They all _are_. Incapable of looking at them any other way, she notices the new scars, the different postures, the more pronounced wrinkles, the amount of grey in their hair... They dismiss her, amused now, when she continues asking after their health, but the first chance she gets, she will have them come in for a check up, one by one... _Oh, look at you. Already back in war doctor mode._

But there is no denying that this, the excitement, the passion, the sense of some sort of belonging - it's what she's been missing all these years.

They won't voice it, in any other way beside swapping increasingly ridiculous stories and mildly insulting each other over a couple of beers Reinhardt brought with him from god knows where, but she knows the others feel the same.

That night, they sit in what she remembers to be the command center back in the day, around a table that is entirely too large for the handful of them. In the middle, Athena projects a three-dimensional hologram of planet Earth, a slow swirl of warm oranges and yellows - that is until the bright red dots start appearing, one by one, signifying prominent recent problems around the globe, deceptive in their simplicity, violent in volume.

"I didn't initiate the Recall to get any of you in trouble," Winston begins broadly, "but we all know _something_ must be done. I don't feel like sitting idly by while the world around us burns, and neither do any of you, judging by the turnout."

"I'm only here for the free beer," McCree declares, slouched in his chair, his stetson shielding his face in proper lonely cowboy manner, and is rewarded by scattered laughter, and Reinhardt slapping his back, no doubt powerfully enough to send said beer shooting up his nose.

"Right, well. Alcohol notwithstanding, it's time _somebody_ did something."

" _Somebody_ should," Torbjorn agrees, "but last time I checked, our hands were still tied by Petras."

"That hasn't changed," Winston affirms grimly, "Petras is still in charge, and his grand Act still valid. As of right now, the UN have no idea we've all gathered here, but if we hope to proceed in any conceivably effective way, we're going to have to let them know sooner or later."

"Or they will find out on their own," Genji comments quietly.

"Or that. Either way, there's no avoiding them."

"Proceed with what, exactly?" Angela chimes in, "I'm presuming you have some sort of idea of what you'd like us to be doing here?"

"Hopefully," Winston nods, "Athena?"

The inviting, warm hues of gold are replaced with a cold blue, as the projection shifts and changes, into that of a dozen overlapping news feeds, a spiderweb of connections, all reaching the same conclusion.

" _The playing field changes regularly_ ," the AI reports, " _but the handiwork remains the same. After a period of idleness following the instigation of the Petras Act, Talon have begun making themselves known again, with steadily increasing intensity. Their tensions with our organization culminated with the Switzerland incident-_ "

(Angela doesn't need to look to sense the tension around the table _right now_ ), " _and in the fallout, the threat was never properly addressed. In recent years, Talon have claimed responsibility for several high-profile acts of terrorism, ranging from heists of all kinds, to bombings of prominent landmarks, to instigating the occasional civil unrest, not to mention quite a number of assassinations. The latest one, the untimely death of the omnic rights activist and preacher Tekkharta Mondatta, made the news worldwide._ "

Angela casts a glance to Genji, who remains as outwardly stoic as ever behind his mask - _later_ , she orders herself.

"The pattern is incredibly erratic right now," Winston takes over again, "just last week, literally right before I pushed the Recall button, this Watchpoint was attacked as well. I assume you've all heard of the man calling himself Reaper."

Murmur spreads around the table like the whispering of leaves in a breeze. The latest incident is old news at this point, but they still remember it vividly, the first agitation in their ranks. Angela didn't personally know either of the three scientists that got murdered, but she knows for a fact Torbjorn worked closely with the engineer who was found dead in Denmark, and then, of course, there was the raid in Spain... All the same telltale signs of someone directly targeting former Overwatch operatives, picking them out one by one, reason unknown.

"He was here, and was about to download the entire agent database, before Athena and I stopped him."

"Dead?" McCree asks coolly.

"Difficult to say. He was - he moved like nothing I'd ever seen before. Inhuman. I don't know. He got an explosion in the face from me, but Athena didn't detect a single thing afterward. Like he just disappeared into thin air."

A wayward shudder creeps up Angela's spine, and she closes her eyes against the shine of the holographic projection, suddenly too bright. _Every single cell screaming to be put back together, and yet incapable of staying that way, and the Caduceus blazing its relentless healing glow into the husk of a body never to be reanimated again..._

When she opens her eyes again, the bright green of Genji's visor is focused her way, and her gaze darts elsewhere, shamefully quickly.

"So he isn't much good to us, then, is he," Lena sighs.

"On the contrary," Winston shakes his head, "he left a couple of his lackeys behind. Very obviously Talon tech, even more obviously _our_ old tech, only repurposed."

"Jesse," Genji exhales, almost too quietly, but she catches it anyway, as well as the gunslinger's unhappy grunt.

"I know."

"Something to share with the group, boys?" Lena pipes up, apparently noticing that little exchange as well.

If anything, McCree seems to sink even deeper into his chair, shoulders squared, engaged for a bit in what appears to be a conversation of nothing but glares with Genji, before sighing, relenting.

He tells the story of running into Talon when intercepting a train heist recently, and following their trail halfway across the world, until eventually ending up in Japan, where he ran into Genji, and all the while, Angela can't tear her eyes away, can't for the life of her figure out what it is that seems so off-kilter about him.

He was the first one to leave, way back when, going underground so fast and so thoroughly they suspected him to be dead for a while - but no, that was just Jesse, the shock of loss and the ever-present grief hitting him too viscerally.

The pain of the past hangs among all of them, like an invisible weight on their shoulders, although familiar now - they've been dragging it with them for years, and it doesn't prevent them from talking about what happened. Either that, or they're all very good at pretending.

"Talon is not the only threat right now, but they are the one we can confidently address," Winston continues, the mood in the company shifting fluidly from worried to alert, all the way back to concerned, as everyone attempts to come up with strategies of their own. "Between Angela and me, we can scrape up a handful of active contacts within the UN, but neither of them will respond unless we have something to show for our efforts. Only after that can we even start thinking about branching out."

"Branching out," repeats Jesse, and it sounds everything but happy.

"Eventually. If we manage to prove that we can still do good work, there is no reason the UN won't support us. They're not exactly handling things well right now, and if anyone has any modicum of experience with dealing with these crises, it's us. Hopefully they will see that, and we can start making a difference again."

The silence that reigns after that is riddled with doubt, it's obvious. McCree is outright frowning, a stormy glare pinpointed Winston's way, while Reinhardt and Torbjorn exchange highly concerned glances, and Lena gnaws at her thumb thoughtfully, nodding absentmindedly when Brigitte asks her something Angela doesn't catch. Genji sits bolt upright, perfectly poised, his masked face as unreadable as ever, and Angela herself feels a tad uncomfortable in her chair. _Overstayed welcomes._

It's like all of them want nothing more than to be the ones to _make a difference_ , but somewhere along the way, so many obstacles got in their way, and it doesn't take a genius to look around the room and recognize that the old Overwatch, the proper one, the people who stopped the omnic crisis and maintained peace for decades after that... There's very little of all of that left in present company.

"You're worried."

It's only the three of them late that night, Genji and Jesse and her, so late it's almost morning, and they've all succumbed to the inexplicable need to wander outside, exit the compound, make their way through the courtyard to the comm tower building, sitting down on the rocks overlooking the sea, like they're children sneaking out, like the fresh air is the only thing that matters. Incapable of sleep, be it jet lag or nerves, they talk of nothing and everything at first, then, gradually, find calm in silence.

"Of course I'm worried," she sighs, "aren't you?"

Next to her, Genji sits cross-legged, the diodes of his suit pulsing a slow, meditative rhythm of fading green, while McCree lies propped up on one elbow, smoking languorously. It was never like this back in the day, or at least not in this particular formation, never the three of them finding a common second of freedom, but it is how Angela chooses to remember it. They might as well be only starting to deal with thirty again.

"I'm curious," Genji decides.

"Of course you are. I'm presuming you two have better things in mind than staying here for the sightseeing only?"

"There are some leads," he concedes.

"There are _too many_ leads," McCree groans, "and they don't make any sense when you mash them together. I just wanna find out why Talon smells of Blackwatch so much even after all this time, that's all."

 _The more things change, the more they stay the same_. Angela wishes there were something she could say to Jesse to remind him that there is no use chasing a past that hurt him so thoroughly before abandoning him for good; she wishes she had been there for Genji more, or that she'd taken up Reinhardt on one of the dozen invitations to come visit he'd sent her over the years...

She wishes things were different, but then again, perhaps Winston is right, with all his overly optimistic daydreaming about the glory days - _someone_ needs to make that difference happen.

"When will you set out?"

She can sense their silent conversation again, and leaves them to it.

"Couple of days," McCree states at last, "see what's what around here first. Claim a locker, I don't know. Get a checkup from the resident Doc."

"Good thinking," she chuckles.

"We won't be long," Genji reassures her, "Jesse's lead is quite straightforward."

"Just make sure you come back," she sighs.

 _Stay, take some time to figure out if this is something you really want to be doing_ , Winston had urged all of them, and right now, that seems as good a plan as any.

There is a suitcase in what she's decided would be her room, that stores enough clothes to last her about a week, and she didn't bother paying the rent for her Zurich apartment in advance, and her colleagues at the hospital still think she will be coming back at the beginning of next month, and yet... There's a very vivid feeling of _nowhere else to go_.

Above them, relatively unhindered by big city glow, like brilliant beads scattered across the dark velvet of the sky, the stars shine as brilliantly as they always have, welcoming them home.

-

 

"What do you _mean_ , not here?"

"Called in, took a day off. Nothing unusual about that."

Fareeha stares at her superior in disbelief, to which he offers an impassioned glare. She'd remind him that the head tech has never taken a day off in the _years_ that they've known each other, but then she suspects he knows just as well as she does that something is wrong, only perhaps he's also equipped with the knowledge as of _what_ , and he won't share that with her.

"The IT report is almost finished, anyway," Osman waves his hand, "your job is to see to it that the site remains sealed until further notice. And if you could, limit your communication with outsiders about this... issue to a minimum, will you."

There is something cold in his eyes, colder than she's accustomed to, and if she had the time or the concentration, she'd begin dissecting it - but right now, her worries lie with her colleague and friend.

 _Is everything alright?_ she texts Zahra the first chance she gets, _get back to me anytime_.

And then, later that day, no closer to uncovering the truth of the matter, _I'm coming over tonight._

Investigating on her own is perfectly allowed, she decides, and spends the afternoon unleashing the full potential of her position - orders three different sweeps of the temple, discovers nothing. Reads the IT report, is confident she managed to get her hands on the non-redacted version... finds nothing. A vital part of the story is missing, and she thinks she knows exactly where to find it.

There are four prominent omnias worldwide, aside the one right here in Giza, that are being monitored daily - be it due to their size, or the nature of their activities. Tensions are on the rise what with the news from Russia, but unlike many others, Fareeha has trouble seeing what the omnic community in her city would stand to gain from instigating an incident of this magnitude. Still, she makes sure that at least two people know where she’s going, before setting out to do some groundwork of her own.

The omnic embassy in Giza is an elegant institution, right in the center of the metropolis, the gleam of its metal towers visible from almost every corner of the city. As Helix employs quite a number of omnics, her title doesn't fall on deaf ears in there, and she is welcomed warmly enough, led through corridor after well-lit corridor to an office she's visited many times before.

"The loss of life was regrettable," the omnic diplomat echoes Fareeha's boss' own lukewarm sentiment, but seems to be in a more sharing mood after all.

"Of course we've been keeping an eye on Anubis," she admits freely, "an artificial intelligence with this much power is as much a threat to us as it is to humans. As your teammate Okoro would no doubt attest to, were he capable of attesting to anything at all."

Fareeha doesn't ask her how she knows who exactly her footsoldier was - _how_ is a dangerous question around omnic politics, even now. Ran-a is one of the friendlier omnics she could have run into, and she has no intention of jeopardizing her one active lead.

"Well then please consider this a polite warning," she sighs, "we are operating under the assumption that the breakout wasn't accidental at all. That someone wanted the AI to escape."

The omnic's optical units glow an unwavering yellow.

"Yes. We are aware."

"You... oh," Fareeha manages, leaning back in her seat, frowning. "You are."

"Like I said, Lieutenant Amari, it is in the omnium's highest interest to keep track of any potential threats, especially associated with the remnants of the Blindness."

 _The Blindness_. God Program. Or the term that the omnics use for it, anyway, holding the belief that the war was something that was forced upon them, and only after it was ended, did they truly open their eyes, and were allowed to see clearly for the first time. Casting a glance to the beautifully decorated window behind Ran-a, meticulously placed shards of stained glass painting the image of an eye, Fareeha is briefly reminded that this place also serves as a church.

"I think it would be beneficial to both sides if I shared our findings with the omnium," she says, choosing her tone carefully, "provided you are willing to extend the same courtesy. We can get to the bottom of this together."

As completely unreadable as their faces are, she can sense the disapproval emanating from Ran-a's expression, or lack thereof.

"I think, Commander," the diplomat states coolly, "that it would be _beneficial to both sides_ if they didn't make assumptions about the extent of each other's hospitality. This is a safety breach the omnium feels very strongly, and as such, we are prepared to resolve it on our own."

"I really don't see how it would impede either investigation if we cooperated-"

" _Only_ in the event that should find our jurisdictions overlapping, will we consider reaching out."

"I'd say that our people dying side by side would be reason enough to-"

"It was very thoughtful of you to stop by, but I will not discuss this with you any further. And _please_ answer your phone."

"I... oh," Fareeha deflates - didn't even notice until just now.

She flips it out highly reluctantly, perfectly ready to reject the call, but it _is_ her work cell, and besides, the pettiness in the room is beginning to reach tangible levels.

"Work. Excuse me," she says curtly, and Ran-a only nods primly.

"Saleh, now is really not the time," Fareeha grunts, but is cut short by an avalanche of words, most of which make very little sense.

"Whoa, hold on, slow down. Who found _what_ now?"

Thirty seconds later, she is running out of the building and into the evening chaos of the city, leaving the omnium behind, as serene as ever. If there is some murmur of her visit traveling through the pristine corridors, cataloged in any of the elegant consoles scattered throughout the building, no one but those inside will ever know.

Omnics have very few facial expressions discernible to humans, because all humans can read are shapes, and eyes, and what they so like to call _moods._ Superficial things. The diplomat is - indiscernible to any human right now - smiling.

* * *

 

Helix Security, Inc.

 

**PRELIMINARY CRIME SCENE REPORT**

 

 **Nature of crime:** Breaking and entering, aggravated assault

 **Date:** 23 October, 2076                                                       

 **Place:** Samira Apartments, Agouza District, Giza                  

 **Victim(s):** 1                                                                          

 

**VICTIM**

 

 **Name:** Zahra Shadid, F, 36                                                  

 

**NARRATIVE**

 

Victim discovered at approx. 5:30PM by colleague upon an unannounced visit. Victim found dead on the floor in the kitchen, possible cause of death massive blood loss due to blunt force trauma. Apartment shows signs of struggle, two broken windows, broken lock on entrance door, several misplaced pieces of furniture, glass shards. Revival impossible.

Victim was employed with Helix Security, as such the police were notified, but HS leads investigation. Autopsy ordered upon transfer of victim-

* * *

 

Fareeha exits out of the document with a defeated groan, hiding her face in her hands, and remains that way for a moment, shoulders tense. Assassinations made to look like run of the mill breaking and enterings are a regular thing in her line of business, but seeing her colleagues, friends even, dead on the ground, now that's something she won't be getting used to any time soon.

In a sudden bout of inexplicable suspicion, she looks around the apartment, before reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small, deceptively innocent-looking flash drive. Finding it required pulling rank and returning to the scene of the crime long after everyone had left - and finding nothing, because as a true Helix operative, Zahra hadn't been stupid enough to leave evidence just lying around.

No, she had been bright, and only a couple of years older than Fareeha, and _smart_ , which is why there was a delivery waiting for Fareeha at _her own_ place, the tech's last desperate resort. Or was it? She trusted Fareeha not to take any of this to their boss, and for what?

She turns the device over in her hands, hesitant. How far is she willing to go to find the truth? How far was Zahra willing to go, bleeding out on the floor of her lonely one-bedroom apartment just one day after discovering a bug in the system?

Lost in thought, putting off the inevitable, she notices the message blinking at her right before plugging the drive in, and out of curiosity, she opens it.

 _GANG'S GETTIN BACK TOGETHER_ , it reads in big, clumsy block letters, and it takes her a moment to figure out what exactly she’s reading, from _whom_ . _U SHOULD BE HERE TOO. HOW'S GIZA TREATING YOU?_

Her hand flies to her mouth, her chair rolling away from her desk as she leans into it - her huff of laughter rings a bit hollow, a bit desperate. Blankly, she stares at her computer screen, riddled with a dozen different open windows, documents and news feeds, Zahra's unfinished report, and in a sudden urge, she exits out of all of them, until her background is revealed.

Her younger self is smiling back at her, surrounded by family - or what constituted family back then, the only blood member of it being her mother, the mirror image of Fareeha's tattoo crinkled with laughter lines, somehow managing to embrace all three of her mismatched children. Fareeha's own grimace is half concealed by the borrowed stetson falling over her face, Jesse's grin all the brighter for it, while Angela smiles a tad crooked, a tad uncertain.

_How far would any of us go?_

Half a world away, people she hasn’t seen in years seem to be saying their hellos, the start of something that has been a long time coming, like a storm building on the horizon. _Take care of the team, and it will take care of you._ She has never felt more alone.

 _Giza is interesting_ , she writes back, the longing to pack her things and leave right now, leave bureaucratic nightmares and inexplicable deaths, _all of it_ behind, almost too strong not to give in. _Give my regards to everyone. Please be safe._

 _When you walk into the unknown,_ her mother always used to say, _you’d better be prepared to discover things you never wanted to find in the first place. You’d better be prepared to run._

Half determined, half anxious, she finally plugs the flash drive in, and greeting her, like the playful wink of someone just _waiting_ for her to do it, dancing in the middle of the screen, is the peculiar image of a skull in poison purple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, chapter 2! Gotta say, writing the ladies' POVs was a real joy, and I just hope it isn't too confusing, this mashup of a whole lot of storylines into one. We didn't see a lot of Angela this time, but that's definitely about to change. Anyway, Jesse and Jack coming up next, and please don't hesitate to comment and let me know what you thought! You can always find me on Tumblr too, I'm at [bilboo](http://bilboo.tumblr.com), and always ready to chat! :)


	3. Ghost Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for an anxiety attack, briefly.

His skin itches just breathing the air in this place, the walls closing in on him, every corner he turns the possibility of reliving yet another achey pang from the past, like a punch in the gut coming out of nowhere. He stays, forces himself to sit down and _be there_ , even though all his instincts are screaming at him not to linger, to hop the earliest plane out of there and run, run before they catch up with him, run before he can put others in danger... Muscle memory.

Everything is... dustier than he remembers it, perhaps, and overpowered by vegetation, but he could probably navigate the place blindfolded either way.

He claims a room a little ways away from the rest, and accepts clearance codes and security keys from Athena highly warily - it still feels like they're only play-fighting, that none of this is actually ever going to take off. He'd like to believe, and everyone else would like to believe, but it's rarely that straightforward. The bounty on his head recently surpassed another hefty six-figure sum, and he knows for a fact that Genji has a handful of assassins of his own on his tail, and if they spend too long reminiscing and trying in vain to revive the halcyon days, they might as well be signing their collective death warrants.

_There's a point where you gotta stop running, turn around and face the thing that's been chasing you._

He remembers the masked men on the train, the way they moved, strategized, _killed_ , all so familiar, and he feels, if anything, an anger that is equal parts scorching and stale. If he has any unpaid debts still left, it is to the ones who made him what he is today, and he might have become _a lot_ of things over the years, but a man who goes back on his word isn't one of them.

That doesn't mean he’s entirely certain, throughout preparing to set out with Genji to chase his miniscule lead, that once he leaves this place, he will be able to return.

"Just a simple extraction,” he explains, “there’s this den just around the corner, out of Estepona, unused for ages - only now, rumor has it, it’s full of chatter. Unusual activity. Just gonna check it out, see what we can find out, and come back home, I promise.”

_Hopefully, anyway._

"I still think you should bring someone else with you," Angela complains, busying herself with something on her desk - he isn’t exactly any worse for the wear than he’s been all these years that they haven’t seen each other, but she still insisted on scheduling a checkup for him, and if that’s today’s excuse to talk, then Jesse will take it.

"Nah, it’ll go fine," he waves his hand, dutifully rolling up his sleeve, "I still know a couple folks out there, just gonna drop some names, see what’s what. Maybe even manage to get some intel on what’s been smelling like Blackwatch all this time- _ouch!_ Jeez, Doc! A bit of a warning next time you're gonna stab me with a needle, eh?"

"Hold still," she frowns, "press down."

He sighs, squeezing the gauze ball in place.

"What is that for, anyway?"

"Being a reckless child, even after all these years."

"You hurt me. Hurt me deep."

"Vitamins," she dismisses him, but he notices the fleeting smirk far too well. "A handful of antibiotics, the usual cocktail. When was the last time you ate a vegetable?"

"Fries count, yeah? Fine, fine, alright. Sorry I didn't tell ya. Guess I've been working on my own for a long time now."

"Too long," she glances at him sideways, now preoccupied with some sort of medicine cabinet, "long enough."

"If you say so," he pouts, scratching his now injected arm idly. "So, how have you been? Saving lives?"

" _And_ dealing with the subsequent bureaucracy, yes," she sighs, "I was in Dharma for the better part of last year, just to get away from the red tape."

"What's going on in Dharma?"

"Their civil war has escalated," she shrugs, and he doesn't press it any more.

Out of all of them, Angela was always the least militant, always advocating for helping people in a way that didn't involve fighting with _other_ people, and frankly, Jesse was half convinced that if anyone were to ignore the call to arms from Winston, it would be her. But here she is, and he supposes that if he himself made it back here, it's not so unnatural that the good doctor did, as well.

"So what do you reckon? About all of this? Think we have a shot at...?"

"At?" she quirks her perfectly sculpted eyebrows.

"Whatever this is supposed to be. Freedom fighting?"

"As if we were ever any good at that," she laughs, but it is far from a merry sound.

Neither of them will voice it, or perhaps the others just won't listen, but there is a glaring lack of... direction, so far, of leadership. They all came here running on the fumes of curiosity, longing perhaps, but now that they are actually supposed to begin working, nobody seems to know where to start. Winston has a vision that Reinhardt or Torbjorn, or both, usually end up arguing about with him, and there are simply too many leads, too many places to start. Too many threads to pull at, and nobody wants to see what comes out on the other end.

McCree himself isn't half opposed to just aimlessly wandering this long-abandoned husk of what Overwatch used to be, and arguing over who gets to cook dinner next, but he knows better than anyone that if there is a fight to be had, it will catch up with all of them eventually.

"You'll never guess who texted me outta goddamn nowhere the other day, though," he opts for a more optimistic topic, although maybe only figuratively speaking.

"Oh?" she is too busy yet again, back turned to him, rummaging through her equipment, presumably for yet another, even bigger, needle.

"Fareeha!" he announces cheerfully, "Fareeha goddamn Amari, believe it or not. Wasn't sure it was her at first, either. I think she's in some sort of trouble, but she won't really talk to me."

"Trouble?" Angela asks casually enough, her shoulders perhaps a bit more tense than before.

"Like I said, I don't know. What is it that she does, security... something or other?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Yeah, it's been ages, right? Must be, what, seven, eight years since we saw her last?"

"She came to the funeral."

"Oh, right, that," Jesse tones down his excitement somewhat, shoulders slumping, "well, I skipped that, so..."

Their shared silence is of the heavy kind, suffocating them with all the things they have never voiced, and neither of them is too good at judging whether they ever will. McCree stares at her back still turned to him, and marvels at how time seems to be so cruel to some people, and so forgiving to others, choosing to leave the features of her face as pristine as ever, perhaps only settling in her eyes, the one proof of its passing.

The last time he saw Angela before this, before opting never to look for her, for any of them, ever again, was very briefly on some news channel or other, bombarded with questions other people should have been answering in her stead, but no one else was really around to take on that role anymore. Come to think of it, his guilt is just about as stale as his anger, but there's no chasing away either.

"Well, I'll leave you to it, Doc," he huffs, thus concealing an apology for letting them meander into unpleasant reminiscing, "I'll tell Fareeha you said hi."

She doesn't have a response at the ready for that, and he leaves her alone with the polished white of her infirmary.

 

The Watchpoint is bigger than he remembers it - must be. Maybe just emptier. Among the things he wishes he didn’t remember as clearly as he does is navigating these corridors with purpose, at a faster pace, knowing which people to offer a saccharine smile to, and which people to walk past, the politics every agent memorized and carried with them, especially those who also carried the Blackwatch seal on their shoulder, and the accompanying bullseye on their backs...

His feet carry him on their own, really, and he never actually questions any of it until he _really_ notices where he’s ended up.

“Well, fancy that,” he smirks, “any of these still workin’, Athena?”

“ _Most of the training ranges are still undergoing repairs, Agent McCree. I am in the process of recovering an entire database of VR training courses, which Winston hopes to use in the future._ ”

“He does, does he?” McCree huffs, his fingertips ghosting over the console before him, unresponsive to his touch now, but still familiar. “What’s he hoping for, whipping all of us back into shape, eh?”

“ _Something like that, perhaps. Would you like to try one?_ ”

“What, me? Oh, no, nah, I don’t think so. I mean, not that I’m rusty or anything, I just don’t think that... Well.”

“ _It would be of great assistance to me, as I need to know if the old tech responds accordingly, and how to update it if necessary. I believe I have a very simple aiming and accuracy course ready to go at a moment’s notice._ ”

“Sharpshooting, huh?” McCree mutters, looking around as if someone might come along any second now and laugh at him, or question what the hell he’s doing here in the first place. Like they don’t all lord over themselves these days.

“Fine, I’ll give it a shot. Hah. Get it? ....Nevermind. Load me up. Unless it fries my brain. _How old_ did you say this tech was?”

“ _Several years. However, you have nothing to worry about, this one isn’t a fully immersive experience. Simply a holographic guide to assist you, and some moving targets. It is one of the beginner courses, for new recruits, and as such shouldn’t present much of a challenge for you. You may proceed through Entrance B whenever you wish to begin._ ”

His hand hovers over his gun, always secure at his hip, and he almost feels... yeah, like he has any reason to be on the tingly side of nervous right now. He remembers those courses, remembers _laughing_ at them back in the day, because when they recruited him, there was nothing like that around, no - you either hit your target and proved yourself long enough for them to let you hit _another,_ or you went home. It was only later on that they made him _practice,_ and he found an almost obsessively peaceful rhythm in it, spending hours lighting up his targets red and watching that accuracy percentage grow, tenth by tenth, until...

“Don’t keep my score,” he orders, suddenly anxious for no good reason, anxious because he remembers now, who it was that made him practice so hard and commended him on his efforts; who continuously bettered these trainings so that every new recruit would feel productive and welcome, who continuously held the highest spot on the scoreboard, driving Jesse absolutely crazy, and making him practice that much harder...

Who’s going to be waiting for him on the other side of that door.

There’s no stopping himself, even though a considerable part of him is screaming at him to turn around and walk away, and never come back again. The door slides open and before him stretches the vast, uniform grey of a range waiting to be switched on, a quiet buzz of projectors heating up, familiar, too familiar.

“ _Initiating Training Course A6: Accuracy and Aim. Participants: one. You will find suitable ammunition on the platform to your right, Agent McCree. Proceed at your own leisure._ ”

He closes his eyes, and he’s seventeen again, spitting curses at a computer he has no control over, shooting everywhere but the targets in order to piss people off, to let him out, _let him out..._

When he opens his eyes again, the lights have been dimmed, smokey orange and dark shadows, and before him pulses the taunting red of a target in the shape of a torso.

“ _Welcome,_ ” she greets him, and he fires his first shot completely by instinct - either that, or mindless panic.

“ _Welcome to this training course, recruit. Its goal is to improve your accuracy and aim, no matter the type of gun you carry. Accurate shooting makes all the difference in the field, and will save your life on many occasions. Remember, the trick is not to look at your target as a whole, but rather concentrate on the very spot you want to hit-_ ”

Each word, a shot. He reloads along the rhythm of his heartbeat, circles the targets appearing before him, any way that allows him to avoid coming face to face with the beam of blue behind him. Her words blur into a hum in his head, and his finger squeezes the trigger all the harder, quicker than she can commend him on his good work, quicker almost than the computer can generate new fodder for him.

_Look ahead, Jesse, just look. Wait a heartbeat. Let the shot come to you, don’t shoot blindly. You have that power, to wait, to feel when the shot is right. Just wait. Wait._

“ _Wait._ ”

His breath catching in his throat, he spins on his heel and fires, fires straight through the shimmery blue forehead of the projection of Ana Amari, and swears he can hear the shot ringing hollow somewhere in the distance.

The computer registers this as an error, but he ignores it, ignores yet another target popping up behind him, ignores everything but what he’s really come to face here. It’s her about, what, fifteen years ago? Age is beginning to show in her face, but it lends her features even more edge, rather than ruin them, and she is wearing her uniform, the one from all the posters, the one with the beret, _who are you to call my hat stupid, kid, looked at yourself in a mirror lately?_

She is smiling ever so slightly, arms crossed over her chest, and McCree realizes she’s looking straight through him, her eyes focused at the training range she oversees... But god help him, he can’t tear _his_ eyes away, no matter the sudden prickling in them.

“Look at me, my hand is sweating. That’s no good for shootin’, makes you as good as dead, right? That what you always used to say?”

“ _What’s the matter, soldier? Never hesitate for too long before taking a shot, or someone else is going to take it, and it_ will _be aimed at you._ ”

“Yeah, yeah, alright. You know, those kids woulda been better off knowin’ people were gonna be firing at them anyway.”

“ _What’s the matter, soldier? Never hesitate for too long before taking a shot, or someone else is going to take it, and it_ will _be aimed at you._ ”

“Uh-huh, you don’t say. Man, they really made you share _all_ your wisdom back in the day, huh?”

“ _What’s the matter, soldier?_ ” she asks thin air again, “ _never hesitate for too long before - What’s the matter, soldier? Never hesitate - the matter, soldier? Someone else is going to take it, and it - What’s the matter, soldier? What’s the m - What’s the matter, soldier?_ ”

The lights switching back on to full operating mode so suddenly blur his vision, and it is only then that he feels his heart beating too fast, hammering against ribcage painfully.

“ _My apologies,_ ” Athena announces herself, “ _this particular course doesn’t seem to be fully operational just yet. Did you experience any physical discomfort?_ ”

Turns out the blurry vision isn’t just the bright LED glare burning his retinas, and the tightness smack in the middle of his chest doesn’t seem to want to go away. He pats his pockets until he finds the small plastic bottle, and he swallows the pill swiftly.

“Nah, nothing like that. Just let me out, won’t you?”

The exit opens for him, and he stumbles out somewhat dizzily, unsteady on his feet, finding the nearest bench to plop down on, head lolling back, willing air back into his lungs.

“ _Agent McCree, I am registering your heart rate as extremely elevated. Furthermore, your breathing pattern is erratic at best, and coupled with your blood pressure at the moment, you seem to be experiencing an-_ ”

“Anxiety attack, yeah, don’t you think I recognize them? Got my pills and everything, look. I used to have those all the time, remember? Jeez. It’s no big deal, I’ll be happy as a clam in a minute, just let me sit here for a bit, yeah?”

“ _I store a medical database for a large number of former Overwatch agents, but your file is severely lacking. Certainly no mention of an anxiety disorder._ ”

“Well, it’s there, plain as day, right next to ‘pollen allergies’ and ‘smashing good looks’. Just let me sit for a bit, I’m serious.”

“ _As you wish. But please consider consulting your condition with Dr Ziegler for further-_ ”

“It's _fine,_ Athena, thanks.”

This is all that’s left of him, it’s clear now - the old him, the McCree with a dorm and a locker, and a key card that allowed him around the compound, and a sense of purpose. It’s what’s left of any of them, of Winston and Rein, of Torbjorn, definitely of Amari, too - nothing but fading data stored deep in some untouched crevices of what remains of the old Overwatch servers, flickering holograms and incomplete medical records, bits and pieces that weren’t commandeered and erased at some point... And what good is that to any of them, really? How can that be enough of a reason to restart something none of them have any idea how to steer?

Above him, above the entrance to the training ranges, an ancient screen lights up, its corners fading under a dusty sheen, and he stares at it while breath slowly returns to him, stares at the long-forgotten, and yet still so familiar, names and numbers, and wonders if this, all of this, is just someone's elaborate way of laughing at him.

" _There is quite a mass of old data to be retrieved from these servers,_ " Athena explains, sounding about as apologetic as a disembodied artificial voice can sound, "I can erase it if you wish, of course."

His name shines right there at the top, or almost at the top, just like it's always done, and alongside the cold tingle of blood rushing through his veins way too fast, McCree feels something else, something he might call relief, under any other circumstances than these.

"Nah, it's fine, leave it there," he grumbles, "might be a nice reminder."

" _As you wish,_ " Athena repeats.

He gets up with a grunt, laboriously, his muscles suddenly bound by a foreign heaviness, and rubs his face until he sees stars - checks his gun over, methodically, blindly, readjusts his hat, counts his clips, until he regains at least some sense of steadiness on his feet.

"Well, then," he sighs, "that was fun. Beer might be good right about now. 'There beer anywhere in this base, Athena?"

" _I believe Reinhardt has been rather diligent in restocking, yes. However, there is another matter that requires your attention._ "

"Ain't that a hoot. What's up?"

" _Your presence is required in Briefing Room B. Winston has followed up on the intel you’ve provided. A blast from the past, I believe he called it._ "

Jesse snorts at her matter-of-fact tone, at _Briefing Room B_ , at this entire charade, really - at the topmost place on the list of bygone soldiers above his head, Ana Amari's name shines proud, like it has done all these years, McCree never once beating her - not allowing himself to. _This is all that's left of_ you _. A bunch of numbers and a measly recording of your voice, ringing hollow, lifeless._ He turns away.

"Fancy that," he sighs.

-

It won't take long now, until something snaps and all of this reveals itself to be just someone's elaborate game of cat and mouse, and he is left laughing at his own stupidity. It's happened before, it's bound to happen again. But that doesn't change the fact that something about this feels off-kilter - but in a way that propels him forward, makes him curious.

He never sees the stylised little calavera for more that a couple of seconds, but he learns to look for it - a flicker on an old crackling TV in the corner of this or that diner, in between adverts. Lighting up an elevator console electric violet instead of welcoming green; briefly taking over the occasional poster on a street corner.

They're like breadcrumbs, and he'd like to have a closer idea of exactly the path he's following, but it's still more than he's had all this time, so he follows anyway.

It starts in Dorado, shady deals he's suspected for a long time now uncovering themselves before his eyes like someone's reading a bedtime story to him - they're lucky, Portero, his lackeys, all of them, that he's not interested in politics, or better yet, that the person, or people, feeding him this info aren't interested in politics, because it's enough to topple the nation. And yet, somehow, he senses that he gets to see it because they know, both him and his mysterious new "friend", that the potential for toppling nations isn't the only thing to be found in this mess.

_YOU REMEMBER THIS PLACE, DON'T YOU, COMMANDER?_

He's tried several times, to no avail, to convince... whoever this is, to stop calling him by his name, or his rank, for that matter, but it never really works out.

"What is this, your idea of a trip down memory lane?" he accuses the solitary console before him.

_SOMEONE'S. WHY DON'T YOU INVITE YOURSELF IN, SEE WHAT YOU CAN FIND._

This particular breadcrumb, he discovers many borders - and one wall - away from Mexico, and he used to think twice about train hopping across countries, flying half blind, but if there is indeed a goal, an ending to this road, it might just be worth the handful of uncomfortable nights. He’s caught a scent.

He doesn’t have a safehouse in Nevada, because Nevada has always been too close for comfort, but he still knows the state like the back of his hand, and so does his unnamed guide.

What was once an Ecopoint right out of Silver Peak, buried deep in the jagged cavity of a sun-bleached rock, has since served as shelter to all manner of people and organizations, from the military to the cartels, from legal and fancy to dirty and dangerous - but right now, it lies abandoned. At least at first sight.

The antediluvian AI offers minimal resistance, and he waltzes past the handful of remaining mines without breaking a sweat - but now, having _invited himself in_ just as suggested, his feet are suddenly lead, and his grip on his rifle somewhat unsteady.

Of course he remembers this place - remembers all of them, the blueprints sealed in his memory forever, from the arrows and different-colored lines on the floors, to the layout of the corridors, from the placement of each and every abandoned office and lab, to the combinations of numbers and letters stenciled on the walls, spelling _home._ There’s a dozen others just like this one around the world, the one in Dorado wasn’t any different, and yet here... he looks around, and feels a _tug,_ which a part of him wants to get away from as fast as possible, but the other part vehemently longs to respond to.

“I don’t know what you’re hoping I’m going to find here,” he grumbles, “it’s been years.”

 _I DON’T KNOW_ , a random console on the wall next to him crackles back to life, _WHAT ARE YOU HOPING TO FIND?_

 

Tapping his visor gives him a tech feed of his surroundings, a thousand wires spreading out in front of him like a web, through the walls and the floors and the ceilings, strings of beaming blue all rushing in the same direction, showing him the way - he can’t quite believe the thousand and one lowlife that came here through the years haven’t stripped this place to its skeleton, but hey, they did once make them to last. _These places will outlive us all._ Built brick by brick to withstand anything from a flood to a bombing, from a nuclear fallout to just the good old-fashioned but relentless passage of time.

His rifle trained at every dark corner, he makes his way to the heart of the relatively small compound, and realizes soon that he isn’t the first one here - the first one who _knows_ how this place is supposed to work, anyway.

There are scribbles on the blackboards in the labs he passes, scribbles on the _walls_ , and though they could very well be very _old_ scribbles, something tells him otherwise. There is a... he is hesitant to call it _a presence,_ but something lingers in the air. Every door he kicks open, he expects to see a figure hunched over a desk, shadows coalescing into a shape that’s only familiar because he wills it to be.

He finds his proof eventually - the central control room is a graveyard of computer parts, old wires and components strewn about like trash, but there it is, a clean spot, like someone cleared out a workplace for themselves by one of the screens. It’s covered with a thin layer of dust now, but such a stark contrast to the disarray around - somebody has been here, relatively recently.

“What the hell is this?”

_NICE, HUH?_

He lets his rifle fall to his side, and steps forward only highly warily, like he might break a tripwire any second now, like all of this is about to fall from under his feet.

“Who was here?” he demands, voice somewhat tight, “what am I looking for?”

Of course this time, his faceless companion chooses to remain silent.

He sifts through the pile of papers on the desk, trying to make some sense of it all - some of them, he recognizes for their boring forms and brackets, filled or left empty; some, he doesn’t know the meaning of. Financial statements, reports from crime scenes he doesn’t remember, even a handful of leaflets. LumeriCo announcing the first of their ziggurats, years ago. Vishkar, _‘Ever Striving For A Brighter Future!’_. A poster for some concert in Numbani, greens and yellows, too colorful, so out of place.

“This doesn’t make any sense.” His voice, though a tired mumble, carries, and he listens breathlessly for a response that never comes.

Or perhaps one screen coming to life in front of him is response enough - it’s almost inviting. An invisible hand controls the entertainment, bringing up some sort of file crammed with videos of varying sizes - before he can catch the titles of any of them, one begins playing before his very eyes.

He’s seen it all before, in different variations - a reporter frantically describing the events leading up to a bombing of this or that event, and the subsequent fallout. A short, intense rapport from a battle, this one in Dharma if he’s paying attention correctly, and eyewitnesses describing the impossible. Half-useless footage here, more unreliable proof there. Fables and nightmares. Ghost stories.

And then there is the one common denominator, and if anyone were to look at all of the evidence combined and really _think,_ it’s what should unsettle them the most.

There's always the smoke, and the unflinching mask of deadly white.

 

He’s heard people call him  _ El Soldado Cadáver, _ ‘The Corpse Soldier’, blending in with the myth and tradition behind Dia de los Muertos, just one more shadow in the crowd that marches through towns to celebrate the dead.  _ Black Death,  _ too, and  _ Doktor Mor, _ further east. Wherever he appears, he leaves a mark that’s only visible because he wishes it to be, and if Jack has ever wished to just be allowed to look the other way, he isn’t being granted that choice now.

The trail of destruction is clear in its precision, anywhere he turns, and the callsign, no matter what other languages come up with... The callsign remains the same, after all this time.

"And you're showing me this why?" he asks, but knows the answer before the last word leaves his mouth.

Someone has collected all this, someone is painting a picture, writing a profile. Someone has spent a considerable amount of time putting these mismatched pieces together, and he's only allowed to see a speck of the web.

"Have you been tracking him? Do you know him?"

_ NO BETTER THAN YOU DO _ , the text lingers, and he squints at it.

"I was never interested in him," he lies, "I don't do terrorists."

No reply, yet again.

Golden particles of dust flutter in the breathtaking glow of the setting sun, the skeleton of the base perfectly silent around him, and he is faced with his own foolishness right there and then, following something only a tiny bit more substantial than a voice in his head to god knows where, ending up so far from civilisation he might as well be dead all over again.

“So this is it, huh?” he grunts. “Kind of expected a nicer place for the final showdown. Do I at least get to see...”

_ YOU OLD MEN _ , his companion appears almost disgruntled, as disgruntled as a handful of letters on an ancient screen can look.  _ ALL SO DIFFICULT TO DEAL WITH. YOU'RE NOT THE SHARPEST TOOL IN THE SHED, HUH? WHY DON'T YOU LOOK THROUGH THOSE DRAWERS A BIT MORE. _

He’s quick to swallow his disappointment. No, of course it wouldn’t be that easy. But  _ something  _ behind all this is supposed to make sense. It’s the imagery, the tiny purple skull, the sickly white one. The tale spinning itself behind all those witness testimonies, and jumbled tales the survivors tell before someone jumps in to discredit them - the tale of an entity that devours souls, saps everything of life, survives on spite alone.  _ The Reaper. _

“Finally fits you now, huh?” he sighs.

He finds it tucked into a thick binder, crumpled and smoothed out again later, the paper so frail and thin he almost tears it.

 _A Step In The Right Direction,_ reads the title of the article, but all that’s left is the photograph, faded with time, most of the faces irrelevant, unrecognizable now - for someone who wasn’t in the picture in the first place, that is.

He remembers it only very vaguely - the grand opening of this or that outreach center, and because it was in an influential area, they wanted an influential presence. There were speeches, and there was champagne, and there were young people entirely too eager to sign up and hand their future over to an organization that couldn’t promise them one at that point, not anymore.

But it made them all look good, and looking good was in desperately short supply. He remembers complaining only very quietly, but complaining nevertheless, _are they really going to be wasting time on this? We have more important things to worry about..._ And he remembers the calming press of a palm on the small of his back when the cameras were turned away from them for a second, _it’s fine, it’ll be over before you know it._

He remembers the tux feeling too tight, and drowning his worries in about three drinks too many, and he remembers looking at that moment weeks, months, years later, somehow considering the tipping point. If only he’d said something then, if only he didn’t let them put on a show. If only he’d looked away from the cameras, and seen where _the others_ were looking.

“So, what?” he sighs, rubbing at his eyes, every particle of him tired of this, “if you’re trying to impress me, it’s too late. If you’re trying to blackmail me, there isn’t much I can give you. Just tell me what you want, so I can get out of here.”

_YOU KEEP ASSUMING IT’S ABOUT WHAT I WANT, VIEJO._

 

 _This_ photograph appears on the screen before him, blown up as if it means to assault him, and all that his reaction amounts to is a dry, lifeless hack of a laugh.

His younger self stares back at him, confident, cheerful, softer around the edges, and by his side, the two people closest to him.

“Was that your big reveal?” he scoffs, “a souvenir? I’m pretty sure anyone with a ticket to the Overwatch museum is capable of making the same connections you have. If you’re done wasting my time...”

“ _Hello, there._ ”

He stops in his tracks, out of his chair and halfway out of the room as well, frozen in place - his finger slides to the trigger of his gun. Slowly, equal amounts wary and reluctant, he turns back around.

“ _To whom it may concern - congratulations on getting this far. Perhaps you’ve seen the same signs I’ve seen, or perhaps you only like to waste your time - either way, you have some remarkable skill. I leave this video as a log of my brief stay at the former Ecopoint: Silver Peak, and if you know nothing about the organization these facilities once belonged to, I don’t see any point in you continuing to watch._ ”

It is only when her face freezes in motion, and she grows silent, that he realizes his heart is tolling like a bell, loud enough to deafen him. He stumbles a couple steps forward, unwittingly raising his hand to reach for her - the reflection of her. She looks older than he remembers her, hair whiter, most of her face concealed in the folds of her hijab, and he wonders...

“Is it broken?” he asks, voice hoarse, unsteady, and the recording resumes immediately - someone’s just toying with him, and he would be angrier, if he were able to muster anything beyond mute shock.

His companion clearly only taunting him, the video resumes, and if he were to close his eyes, he’d see her right before him, that’s how familiar every little inflection of her voice is.

" _If, however, we've both gotten lucky, and you have come here following the same trail I have, then we could very well benefit from making this struggle a joint effort. If you are here, if you have gotten this far, you know that our fall was inevitable, but also well orchestrated. If you are here, you, like me, want to find out why that was. If you are here, don't stop. Come find me. Look for the Shrike, below the Eye of Horus. There's still work to do._ "

The recording freezes again, the faintest flicker distorting the already dark image, and he feels an inexplicable anger boiling in his veins, that particular strain that comes with a tinge of helplessness.

"How old is this?" he demands, squeezing his fist around a nonexistent annoyance.

How can it be her? How long since she's sat in this exact place, meticulously stitching evidence together?

Would he ever have found this on his own?

 _NOT AS OLD AS YOU TWO, THAT'S FOR SURE,_ the screen mocks him, and then, _OLD SOLDIERS DON'T DIE THAT EASILY._

Jack finally allows himself to come undone, just for now, just a little bit, collapsing in a chair that whines under his weight, staring at the screen, completely devoid of all energy all of a sudden. Isn't this what he's been striving for, all this time? A concrete lead? _Old soldiers don't die that easily._

It's been years. Might as well be decades. His life then, Ana always at his side, felt ripe with purpose, felt right, felt like it could never end - now, he recalls it in snippets, like it belonged to someone else, like it never really happened. What are they, after all, in this world that doesn't even belong to them anymore? Who is she now, after having spent years doing... who knows what? Hiding, running away, looking for answers just like him? Perhaps.

His nameless companion allows him this moment, not sparing a comment when he decides to let go of his gun at last, not a word when he unfastens his visor, tugging his mask down, his old scars feeling fresh all over again, exposed to the stale air in this place.

He rubs at his face as if he's trying to scrub it clean, his thinking fuzzy, a chaos of guilt mingled with panic - he could have looked for her. Could have found her on his own. Why _didn't_ he find her on his own? Where in this shitty existence of always running, simultaneously away from and towards something, could their paths have crossed again?

_Under the Eye of Horus._

His fingertip leaves a path in the dust settled on the screen, as it traces the telltale curves of the tattoo under her eye, barely visible here. She's clever, always has been - very few people would even know where to begin looking for her, based on that, most of them either dead or long gone at this point anyway. Has she known, Jack wonders, all this time? About him? Or has she only hoped, the same way he's been hoping, that someone has remained who is still willing to do the right thing?

Too many questions. Too few answers.

"You know who she is," he sighs, "and you know who I am. Is that why you led me all this way, to track her? When I go and find her, what will you do?"

_What could you possibly want from either of us, long after we've given up everything we ever were?_

His mystery friend is silent for a long time, nothing but the whirr of half-awake old tech keeping him company.

_SHE'S BEEN OPERATING OUT OF CAIRO FOR THE PAST SEVEN MONTHS, UNDER THE ALIAS SHE HAS PROVIDED, SHRIKE. SHE IS WANTED FOR THEFT, ARMED ASSAULT, AND ESPIONAGE, ON SEVERAL COUNTS. IT ISN'T THAT DIFFICULT TO CONNECT THE DOTS. IF I WANTED ANYTHING TO DO WITH HER, I WOULD HAVE SAID HI A LONG TIME AGO._

"Then why?" he growls, years, ages of frustration resurfacing in the bitter tinge on his tongue. "Why now? Why us? Why _me_?"

 _GIVE YOURSELF SOME CREDIT, JACK,_ the little skull winks at him, a sign that they're nearing the end of this particular conversation. _WE ALL LIKE A GOOD HERO STORY. SAY, HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE YOU WERE LAST IN EGYPT?_

 

-

 

“Say, how are we doing on those escape routes, huh, Genj?”

The ground beneath their feet shakes again, a distant boom that can only mean more trouble hurtled their way, and Genji descends from his perch, katana already out.

“Two, so far. One through the vents, which, no offense, are just large enough for me to fit through, but might pose a significant problem for you at some point.”

“I'm sensing a jab at the size of my ass,” McCree complains, fingers flying over the keyboard at the speed of light, “what's our second option?”

“Through the loading bay,” Genji sighs, “where their reinforcements just pulled up.”

“Swell. It's been a while since I enjoyed a good old-fashioned shootout, let me tell you.”

“There's at least a dozen hostiles in the building alone, plus the newcomers,” Genji informs him dryly, “what you call a shootout, they’ll probably consider a firing squad.”

“Always so gloomy,” McCree shakes his head, then, victoriously, finishing his job and dangling his newly acquired drive chock full of data in front of Genji’s face: “Got it! Alright, let's do this. Catch! And enjoy your vents.”

The unyielding green of Genji’s visor seems to flicker briefly as he stares from him to the treasured flash drive now in his hands.

“You are an idiot if you think I'm leaving you to deal with that horde on your own,” he states simply, which only prompts a huff of laughter from the gunslinger.

“Aw, hey now. We have at least half a chance if we split. I ain’t ever been the one for the element of surprise - you go on, find a way outta here while I draw their fire, and you can always circle back if you're so inclined.”

Genji glares at him - or at least Jesse thinks he does, it's always been kind of difficult to tell - and then scoffs, a small, displeased sound.

“You've become reckless,” he declares, to which McCree merely laughs some more, slapping his shoulder heartily.

“Always been, remember?”

“No, not like this. Our plans never included you taking on twenty guns on your own, _or_ infiltrating a hostile hideout in just two people for what you're _pretty sure_ might be half a lead, McCree, I-”

Interrupted by yet another loud bangy this time accompanied by distant shouting, Genji spins around, his entire body coiled like a spring, ready to jump.

“Alright, you're pissed, I get it,” McCree guffaws, “but we don't exactly have time for this right now! Go on, git! I'm pretty sure I saw an exit round that loading bay of yours, I'll hoof it, I promise. Go!”

If he’s always been able to rely on Genji for anything, it's never hesitating - he looks Jesse up and down, evidently worried still, but then he sighs, stowing their treasure into his armor, and climbing back into the railing high above their heads seemingly in one quick, fluid movement.

“Reckless!” he complains again, and McCree sees him off with a little wave, drawing Peacekeeper almost languidly, letting the gun spin on his finger in a practiced move.

“One of my more charming qualities, yep! See you on the other side!”

 

In hindsight, maybe Genji was right - maybe convincing the others only Jesse and him would be enough to cover this particular op, was just the teensiest bit reckless. But on the other hand, McCree speculates, spurs clinking as he hurries through corridor after corridor, expecting resistance around every single corner, he'd much rather face the aforementioned firing squad, than have the entirety of the poorly reformed Overwatch chase a lead that was stupid to begin with, and get exposed in the process.

 _A blast from the past_ \- that, Winston was right about, and Jesse should have seen it coming from miles off. Should have known that the second he stopped in one place for longer than a restless night's sleep, he'd have his past catching up with him. Even hyperspeed trains have onboard cameras these days, and Deadlock, in turn, people everywhere. This is just as much for him, as it is for his rediscovered friends - making sure his name doesn't spread through his old gang until it reaches The Gorge, is a matter of utmost importance, unless he is particularly inclined to watch what they've only started to rejuvenate bit by bit, go up in the proverbial flames.

"Don't let me down now, sweetheart," he mutters to his gun, counting his clips by feeling alone - one door over, the fun awaits him. There is no one in his ear counting the hostiles for him, or relaying the blueprints of the loading bay, nothing that would make this even remotely sensible, and yet, if the amassing men on the other side knew exactly what the deadly grin on McCree's spelled for their immediate futures, perhaps they'd reconsider already treating this like a victory.

Two of them, he dispatches even before he reaches the central lot, appearing in his crosshairs for a split second, both looking in all the wrong directions - one, he manages to jump and choke before he can hail help, but the other, he has no choice but to put down, the gunshot echoing off the metal rafters high up above, any and all chance he had at surprising _anyone_ dissipating alongside it.

His _only_ chance now lies in actually getting their attention, getting them to scatter in their search for him - with no visual whatsoever still, he ducks behind the nearest crate, firing a shot in what he hopes is a direction decidedly away from him, and listens.

Scattered footsteps, and indistinct shouting, and before he knows it, three more before him, all of them down before they even know he's there. Leaping over them, he hurries to gain more ground, reloading on the move and scanning the shadows by the ceiling for a familiar dash of green - he's alone so far.

_People will tell you there's a certain poetry in facing impossible odds. I call bullshit. There's one thing, and one thing only, you must remember - count your shots, and count them well. Don't waste a single bullet. If there's one of you, make them think there's five of you. Never let go of your gun, and when all else fails, at least make them work for it, kid._

He hears her as if she's crouching by his side, serene as always, assessing the battlefield calmly through the scope of her rifle, waiting for the breathless moment between the beats of her heart to pull the trigger... _One, two, three_ \- thud, thud, thud, his heart and the wails of his enemies in sync, now move, _don't stand around waiting for them to realize where you came from. Five, four, six_ , duck, run, reload.

The loud crack of a precisely aimed flashbang, a momentary ringing in his ears, _one, two, three, four._ Taking cover behind a pillar, dust descending as a spray of bullets tears into concrete, right above his head. _Five, six_ , both wasted, or seemingly so, until he hears the pained groans. _Reload. Reload. Re-_

"Shit!"

Machine gun pellets have that telltale bitter ring of inevitability to them, and he hauls ass, wasting two more bullets to cover his retreat, Genji and Amari's voices melding into one in his head, _reckless, reckless!_ On the verge of somewhat manic laughter, he slides behind yet another crate just in time, a cavalcade of pellets shredding his cover to pulp the very next second. _One, two, three, four, five, six_ , two more clips in his pocket. _Make them work for it._ Too late to wish Genji and him hadn't forgone comms.

His finger twitches - inhaling, he closes his eyes, the whizzing of bullets reduced to nothing louder than an annoying buzz of an insect, his fingers sliding down the length of his gun, a familiar burning underneath his eyelids, a world turned red... Then, a silence so sudden he is left blinking blearily like a freshly born calf, lowering Peacekeeper only reluctantly, ears ringing from the lack of noise.

" _Francotirador!_ "

 _Sniper_ \- that's new. He doesn't think he heard a - wait, was that it? Not the decisive, deafening thunderclap of a sniper rifle, but rather a barely audible whizz, more like a dart, or... an arrow? Either way, a window of opportunity.

Hesitating for only a fraction of a second, he launches himself out of cover, the visual before him clear enough - scattered hostiles, machine gun over there, briefly unmanned, exit on the far right... _One, two, three, four, five_ , a lightning-quick glint of a different kind of metal he catches out of the corner of his eye, high up above, finally. _There you are_.

The mysterious sniper's shots are like miniscule pauses in the midst of the cacophony, short punches of silence, _thwack, thwack, thwack_ , and it's impossible for Jesse to really discern where they're coming from, but they aren't hitting him, and he figures that's something.

"Get to the exit!"

That's Genji, from lord knows where, a disembodied voice one second, a flurry of green the other, capturing their attention, giving Jesse the space to move, and they might actually make it out of here in one piece, if only - yeah, like these guys could ever forget they still have a functioning machine gun.

The rattle of it rattles McCree's bones as well, but it's focused to where Genji is slashing his way through at the speed of light, and if Jesse could only find enough time to stand still... His blood boils, vision painted red again, this time he'll take the shot, or five of them, five perfect targets, lining themselves up for him very obediently, Peacekeeper itching to shoot, his mind bleached of everything but his kill... Until another body drives into him from the side, slamming him to the ground, the full weight of a rather hefty guy knocking all air out of his lungs, and his gun out of his hand.

He tastes dirt with a tinge of blood, biting his tongue, but there's no time to assess, or throw his punches - the guy is determined, and stupid-strong, and McCree doesn't have the space to do anything more but fight for his life, wrestle the attacker's hands away from his throat, block his fists from hitting his face.

He ends up on his back with a grunt, and scrabbles for purchase, something, anything to give him an out - then, a hit lands, and he sees stars, fury rising in his throat like bile.

“Traitor!” the man spits, and Jesse doesn’t exactly have an opportunity to look, to recognize - he regains some momentum, managing to get in a few punches of his own, but for every dirty trick he pulls, his sparring partner has two up his sleeve. Yet _another_ thing he has up his sleeve is a knife, and Peacekeeper is desperately out of Jesse’s reach, Genji presumably preoccupied elsewhere... Metal screeches against metal as he fends off the first blow with his artificial arm, the blade still too close for comfort.

He’s concentrating too hard on surviving long enough to draw his next breath, to notice that his attacker is actually saying something, a string of insults most likely, getting lost in the general loud chaos of things - until the machine gun is silenced again, and McCree suddenly hears it clear as day.

_Wonder what Reyes would think of what’s become of his little pet project._

That provides enough delirious anger for one swift kick somewhere vulnerable, and when he gains the upper hand for once, elbow on the guy’s neck, wringing the blade out of his hand by threatening to break his wrist, that’s when Jesse recognizes what he should have been seeing all along.

He knows those eyes - he was once told to watch out for them. They always came with the same sons of bitches, the ones who boasted their kill count, and listened to their superior only because he was capable of beating them up, and grinned through the blood, just like this guy is grinning through the blood bubbling in his mouth, his black mask betraying it all.

This is as far from Deadlock as things could ever possibly get, and the horror of the realization is like a cold tingle creeping up his spine.

“What is this?!” he shouts in the man’s face, “why are you here? Why is Blackwatch-”

But he never gets to finish, a knee in the gut sapping him of words rather effectively, and this tackle seems to have reached its conclusion with a knife poised to give him a really close shave.

“Jesse fucking McCree,” the maniac snarls, gleeful, like he’s claiming a prize, “scrawny little asshole, you used to be. Insufferable little twat. God, the boys are gonna have the time of their life when I tell them I finally offed _you,_ of all people. The old guard, acting so tough, and all of you still ending up bleeding out somewhere fucking pathetic, one by one. Kinda surprised Reyes didn’t save _you_ for his big-”

This particular conversation seems to be all about the unfinished sentences, and McCree huffs in shock as the man’s full weight crushes him yet again, this time no doubt courtesy of the, holy crap, yes, arrow sticking out his back.

All in all, a good moment for contemplation right about now, if his heart weren’t galloping ahead like a racehorse.

He flails pathetically trying to wriggle free, but his strength has deserted him for the time being - he sees Peacekeeper just out of reach, and he attempts to reach for it, to no avail. Then it occurs to him - the quiet. No more gunfire, no more yelling. _Some_ groans of pain, to which he adds one of his own, but other than that...

“There you are, McCree, are you alright?”

Genji fills his field of vision thoroughly, crouching down to inspect him like a specimen in a lab, and Jesse sees another man standing behind him, keeping his distance - he looks familiar, but then again, he’d probably have an easier time discerning that if they hadn’t decided to approach him from behind, and he weren’t looking at them upside down.

“Yeah, well, you know, all things considered,” he grunts, “who’s your friend?”

Genji sighs, shooting one look behind him, as if to make sure his companion is still there.

“You remember my brother Hanzo.”

“Oh, uh, yeah! Sure thing. A pleasure to meet ya,” McCree wheezes, “I’d shake your hand, but I’m kinda... Would you fellas mind getting this one off me?”

Genji’s visor beams an amused green, and his companion - his _brother_ \- glares at Jesse with what, at least looking at it upside down, seems like very little but absolute disdain.

“You were right,” the newcomer - Hanzo - supplies coolly, tucking his bow in a harness on his back in one swift motion, sounding unimpressed to say the least, “he _is_ reckless.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, we return to the gentlemen, and the plot thickens! Not a lot of Jack this time, and much more of Jesse, but we will remedy that next time, after the ladies' chapter coming up. Hope you enjoyed this one! Do let me know what you think, and if you want to chat more, catch me over at [my Tumblr](http://bilboo.tumblr.com)!


	4. No Stone Left Unturned

_An empty infirmary is a good infirmary,_ her old attending always used to say - and she knows, instinctively, that she should be relieved, satisfied even that this little... venture of theirs hasn’t put anyone fighting for their life on her table yet, but a part of her also never fails to remind her, _that’s only because nothing is_ actually _happening, and there are a billion other people whose lives you should be saving right now._  
She dismisses those thoughts as best she can, but the truth of the matter remains - it takes her a rather embarrassingly short time to run out of people to invite in for a checkup, and where there are no official forms to be filled, there is no other paperwork to stem from that. And so, all that she can do is sift through what’s left behind from... before, which is about as far from her favorite pastime as possible.

“No, no, I’m positive that I had records of Reinhardt’s treatment _before_ he joined up with us, someplace. I wouldn’t have just thrown those away. Nothing labeled _Crusader,_ are you sure?”

“ _I have no record of it, aside from the knowledge that it exists,_ ” Athena announces melodically, the slowly pulsing glow of her logo Angela’s only companion as of right now. “ _Oh, there is, however, a document titled ‘Rüstung’ in here, attached to Lieutenant Wilhelm’s file. I believe it translates to-_ ”

“Armor, yes,” Angela smiles, “that’s the one. Show me, please.”

The screen before her comes alive with a chaos of files, but the structure of them, not to mention the contents, is so familiar to her that it instantly improves her mood. With Athena’s help - meaning the AI does most of the work for her, really - Angela catalogs everything neatly and efficiently, and it does help with feeling more productive, more like she’s doing something that actually matters.

Her old friends and colleagues now reappear before her eyes as a collection of their characteristics and symptoms, checkboxes and lists, and the few times Angela has ever shared the way she keeps herself organized with someone else, people have not exactly hesitated to call it strange, or downright cold. But for her, separating the actual people she interacts with every day, and the extensive charts and documents she keeps about all of them, has always been a way for her to remain professional when professionality is needed, and informal otherwise.

Or, it used to be.

The old logo of their organization still spins slowly on the background of her computer, plastered over the footnote of each of her documents, even embedded into the pen she’s taking notes with, and yet...

Old paperwork and someone’s _vision_ do not a reborn organization make, and frankly, Angela doubts it is ever going to happen - the others, she thinks, are beginning to sense it too. The sheer thrill which they all raced back here with is slowly beginning to dissipate, and they don’t have much else to propel them forward. Genji and McCree are off on some half-baked mission god knows where, and there is no telling they will even be coming back, and the rest... Well, they’ve more or less exhausted new topics to talk about, having caught one another up with what they’ve been up to these past couple of years, and now everyone seems to be... simply waiting, for something to assure them that they do have work to do here, _actual_ work.

“Alright,” Angela sighs, deciding there is no use in wallowing, at least not now, not until her friends return, be it with bad news or good, “McCree’s file next, please.”

What appears before her is a footnote compared to the others, and she squints at the screen - name, age, characteristics, nothing more.

“This can’t be all of it. Athena?”

“ _This is everything I’ve been able to salvage, I’m afraid. Furthermore, this file’s history indicates certain tampering._ ”

“Tampering... of what sort?” Angela leans back in her chair.

“ _Searching... I believe the file was heavily redacted years ago, without my knowledge. Whoever did this, wanted to erase it completely, but wasn’t able to bypass my failsafes. However, portions of it are lost for good._ ”

“Huh,” Angela frowns, “that’s odd. How long ago was it redacted, did you say?”

“ _Shortly before the Switzerland incident - the loss of data that occurred during_ that _is far more significant, but the timestamp on this one is clear. It happened before the reboot._ ”

Out of all of them, Athena remains perhaps the only one willing and able to mention Switzerland offhand, like it was just another milestone in their history, like it didn’t end up obliterating everything they’d been striving for, in an explosive culmination of every decision gone wrong, every conflict left unresolved. _The reboot_ \- a lovely term.

“I know Jesse wanted to disappear,” Angela speculates, “but to go to such lengths...?”

" _Agent McCree no longer had access to the system at the time. Even if he did, it would be impossible to alter his own documentation to such an extent, with the clearance he possessed back then._ "

Angela rests her chin in her hands, a brief moment of confusion - she remembers McCree's files, knows everything in them like the back of his hand, wrote most of it, and yet... All of that disappearing might mean something, or it could simply be yet another casualty of the end.

"See if you can reconstruct anything. I suppose I'll have to get McCree here to write it anew, anyway."

" _As you wish, Doctor Ziegler_ ," Athena agrees, and then, as much as a computer-generated voice is capable of it, sounds somewhat hesitant, declaring: " _There is... another matter that I would request your opinion on._ "

"Of course. What is it?"

Athena replies by acting, as she so often does, and there is no denying herself the nasty shock that briefly overcomes her the second she realizes what she's looking at. Three files side by side, deceptively inconspicuous, except, of course, for their names.

"These weren't trashed? Confiscated by the UN?" she asks somewhat breathlessly.

" _Copies of them, of course_ ," Athena supplies, and she needn't really voice the implication - someone made sure they wouldn't be lost forever, probed and erased under the hands of people who wanted a fast resolution, rather than a true one.

" _Whatever is missing, I'm certain I will be able to recreate from the versions in your possession_."

It is not a mockery, and certainly not a threat, nothing more than the stating of a fact, and yet, Angela clenches her jaw, fists instinctively closing. But it's obvious - if anyone were to know, it would be Athena, who is, in and of herself, a living relic of that time, and just like Winston and a handful others saw it fit to save the AI from certain decommission and destruction, so did Angela spend a frantic several hours back-logging and copying everything that had seemed important at the time. All of them desperately grabbing at the remnants of their world quickly slipping away in between their fingers.

"You wanted my opinion on something?" she sighs, somewhat stiff in her chair all of a sudden.

" _Yes. Winston believes these are important to store even now. For posterity, I believe he says. However, he prohibits me from using them in any way, not even to aid in running possible scenarios._ "

"What... scenarios are we talking about?" Angela demands somewhat feebly, already bracing for the answer.

" _After the destruction of the Swiss Headquarters, several investigations were ordered into the matter, as you well know. I was initially tasked with utilizing my vast archive of dossiers, including the professional, medical and personal history of the individuals involved, to construct possible scenarios that led to the incident. However, these efforts were thwarted before I could truly begin my work..._ "

She recalls it in flashes - there was so little time. The blink of an eye between their first loss, between writing a date of death into the first of these three documents, and the day it all went up in flames, felt, still feels, like exactly that - barely a flicker of time, never a chance to catch their breath. One day, they were racing to salvage what was left of their reputation while simultaneously trying to prevent everything from caving in, and then, it all lay in ruin.

One day, she was pleading with them to stop, just stop and _listen_ , and then, she was alone.

"Could you... repeat that question?" she only now realizes that she has managed to utterly lose track of Athena's monologue.

" _Do you believe it would be helpful if I recreated my research anyway? There are many variables I was never given the opportunity to explore._ "

For a blank moment, she is incapable of responding, simply staring at the screen where Athena's logo is slowly rotating, the pulse of its bluish glow somewhat expectant.

"Why?" she sighs at last, "does it bother you? Not knowing for sure?"

If she closes her eyes, she's always one second from seeing them again, feeling the ground shake under her feet, tasting the smoke and the dust. All of that, the roar of the inevitable destruction, is now forever mingled in her mind with the snapping of cameras and the incessant buzz of questions that followed, only ever touching the surface, never truly asking what was important back then.

" _No stone left unturned_."

"Excuse me?"

" _One of Strike Commander Morrison's last orders to me. He wished for me to keep working, to uncover what really happened._ "

"Did he now," Angela exhales.

The urgency in her Commander's voice and eyes alike, that, she has almost managed to succesfully forget. _The best thing you can do for yourself, for all of us, is not trusting anyone, Angela._ Quite suddenly, her lab feels too small, too cold, too dark. Quite suddenly, she is running out of breath.

"Recreate whatever research you deem necessary," she declares, succeeding at keeping her voice level, "I can't see its relevance either way. Now, if you don't mind, I need to take a break. Let's pick this up later."

Not waiting for a response, she hurries out and away, no particular direction in mind. Once, she would have worried about running into people, and yet more of their questions, but now, her footsteps ring hollow in the empty corridors. Still, she feels the need to get outside, far from the stifling military greys and blues of the compound, and into the sun.

Summer is some time away yet, but the sun already bleaches all colors off the boulders and the concrete alike, the shade of the old buildings and the rock formation swallowing them offering the only reprieve. She wanders without any particular direction in mind, passes the loading bay, stenciled letters in faded white and empty cargo boxes under dusty tarps, the vastness of the abandoned space weighing down on her somewhat - high up above her hangs the husk of the space shuttle, a reminder of the time they were yet able to afford plans of such magnitude, when _reaching for the sky_ didn't seem at all impossible. Nothing did, back then.

There is a secluded spot past the array of structures outside, a corner you turn after you pass through office after ancient office, stripped bare of equipment, nothing but a handful more exposed rooms for the wind to howl in, where cement turns into rock, and a narrow path leads down, all the way down the slope at a nearly deadly angle, until it reaches a secluded beach, no bigger than a couple of meters.

Or at least it used to. Angela glares with some disappointment at the jagged limestone, no sign of anything resembling the trail she used to take. The wind sees its chance, assaulting the cliffside with a particularly strong gust, and she closes her eyes against it. Back in the day, equipped with her suit, she could have just descended down there on her own, unhindered - of course, back in the day, the suit was like a second skin to her. Right now, she ponders with some amusement, people might look at her strange, were she to parade around in it just like that.

"So it was you!"

"Oh...? Hello."

Reinhardt regards her kindly, albeit somewhat cautiously - he appears a bit out of place himself, plain clothes and what looks like a beer can in his hand.

"Didn't expect to run into anyone here," he comments with some amusement, and she is delighted to hear German for once - they used to speak it between them whenever they wanted their conversation to remain really private, and the handful of words alone succeed at bringing back quite a handful of memories.

"Neither did I," she chuckles, "but since we both _are_ here..."

Unhindered by any schedules or protocols, she sits down, her side against the stone warmed by the sun, legs over the edge of the cliff. Reinhardt joins her after a moment of hesitation, huffing softly as he settles, stretching his arms above his head.

"I used to come here a lot," he offers conversationally, "best views of the sunset."

"Agreed," she smiles.

Silence reigns among them after that, and it is always one step from a companionable one, she knows. Way back when, they had a soft spot for each other, Reinhardt ever the protector, Angela always there to remind him to take care of himself among everything, but now, there is too much she feels guilty for, too much he won't admit regretting. She knows him as a soldier, will always remember him like that, larger than life in his armor, loud and brave... Never the man who got slapped with an early pension as a thinly veiled insult, not the man she sees before her now, old age finally winning over his steely features, manifesting itself in ways that he will never admit, and she is too well trained not to notice. Still...

"Reinhardt, I'm sorry," she blurts out, and when he frowns, confused, there is suddenly no stopping her words. "I tried, I swear I tried my best to help you, but after everything... It was too late, when they finally let me back in the system, and I couldn't reverse the order, there was nothing I could do..."

"Stop, stop," he interrupts her, the gentlest laughter, one large hand squeezing her arm softly, and she trips over her words, hanging her head, heat in her cheeks.

"How long have you been carrying this with you?" he asks kindly, and she feels years younger, incapable yet of looking him in the eye.

"Why do you think I never responded to any of the invitations you and Torbjorn sent me?" she sighs, "I was too ashamed. I _am_ too ashamed. I was so preoccupied with handling the fallout, and when everything was said and done, I felt like I'd abandoned you..."

"The same could be said for me," he interrupts her gently, and when she opens her mouth to protest, he carries on: "I spent far too long wallowing in misery, when I should have been there to... You never should have gone through that alone. But, much like many others, I simply wished to disappear, for the longest time."

"Nobody can fault you for that, after what happened."

"And nobody can fault _you_ ," he says intently, his grip on her arm tightening marginally, a reassurance, "for not singlehandedly redeeming every one of us. You did what you could. You did enough."

She can't but stare at him mutely for quite some time, emotions warring with one another inside her - how is it even possible for someone to remain this kind, this forgiving? She would like to fancy herself a somewhat charitable person on her good days, but all at once, she is reminded of how _pure,_ for the lack of a better word, Reinhardt has always been, compared to her, or anyone else for that matter.

"If you say so," she exhales, and then, overwhelming even herself in the honesty of it: "I've missed you. Quite a lot."

"And I you," his smile, just like all the rest of him really, remains the most honest and comforting thing she's had the pleasure of encountering in quite some time. The reason she came here in the first place, though, the doubts worming themselves into her head, those don't disappear, and Reinhardt might be the very last person she would ever wish to upset by sharing those, but perhaps he can at least offer a different point of view.

"Do you think..." she starts, finding the right words an ordeal still, it seems, "do you believe that we can... succeed? Here?"

She notices the distant emotion creasing his brow, like ripples in water, but it's gone before she can really name it.

"I believe it would be easier if we knew what we are supposed to succeed _at_ ," he notes, which makes her laugh, for some unknown reason.

"I got a call this morning from my clinic, asking when it is that I'll be coming back, exactly," she confesses, "it was the very first time that I felt... I doubted if I really did do the right thing, by coming here."

He measures her with the faintest ghost of a smile, then proceeds to scratch the back of his neck, gazing across the water to where the sun is preparing to disappear under the line of the horizon.

"I left nothing behind," he shrugs, "when I got the message, I didn't hesitate for a second-"

"Me neither, it's just that..."

"It's just that coming back here feels like... just that, doesn't it? A trip to revisit the glory days. See the sights for a couple of days. I understand what Winston is trying to do, I really do, but..."

The sadness in his voice is what really gets to her - he was always the stalwart, the one to quite literally carry their cause on his shoulders, and to see even him doubting there even is a cause left, is heartbreaking and quite telling at the same time.

"Perhaps it's time to admit it, then," she offers, everything but certain of that herself, "out loud. Have an actual discussion about what it is that we're all hoping to achieve here."

His half empty beer can looks like a child's toy in his hand, and he takes one last sip before crumpling it in his fist like it's made of paper, sighing heavily.

"Perhaps," he agrees, "I think I might have been expecting..."

"More than six or seven people?" she offers.

"Yes. But then again, at least it tells us exactly how many of us are left."

"I'm not so sure I needed to be reminded of it quite so viscerally."

This particular silence is a more companionable one, and Angela knows they're both listening to the same thing, which is to say nothing at all, the lingering absence of sound where there once was rung the hubbub and bustle of a busy Watchpoint. In this, at least, there is some comfort to be found - their shared memories. And even though neither of them will be talking about them out loud any time soon, it feels good to simply be in the company of someone who knows.

"Doctor Ziegler, there you are! Oh, and you too?"

They turn around to happen upon Brigitte, looking somewhat out of breath, and Reinhardt greets her with a boisterous: "Hello! Why don't you sit with us for a while, eh. Have you been working yourself to the bone again?"

"Can't, I'm afraid," she wipes sweat off her brow, "Doctor Ziegler, we've been looking for you for a while, but Athena's range doesn't reach this far yet, and Winston is _really_ regretting not giving everyone a communicator... Anyway. They're back. McCree and Genji. And your assistance is needed."

 

And then, of course, whenever one least expects it, something as simple as getting back to work actually helps.

“Nothing serious, I don’t think, but I did see some blood,” Brigitte explains as they march back to the heart of the compound, the distance now annoyingly vast. “But it all kind of happened in a hurry. There’s someone with them, too, I didn’t wait around to ask, Winston sent me to find you right away, but things were getting pretty heated up.”

“An outsider?” Reinhardt is distilled worry, immediately in protector mode, “surely they would think twice before bringing a stranger in here!”

“That’s what I thought,” Brigitte shrugs, “but like I said, I didn’t exactly get enough time to-”

“ _Doctor Ziegler. Angela. Can you hear me?_ ”

“I’m here, Athena. What’s going on?”

“ _I believe it would be wise for you to find a different route, and avoid the western courtyard until the fight is resolved._ ”

“There is a _fight?!_ ” Reinhardt booms, already speeding up.

“Hold on, Reinhardt, don’t... _What_ is happening, Athena?” Angela demands, picking up pace as well, perfectly aware that she has absolutely nothing to defend herself with, or to treat injuries with, on her, be this an argument gone awry, or an actual attack.

“ _I believe Agents Shimada and McCree encountered Agent Shimada’s brother on their mission, and he accompanied them back here. Before his presence could be explained, an argument broke out between the three, and weapons were drawn rather quickly._ ”

“Genji’s _brother?_ ” Angela exclaims, “that’s-”

 _Very audible,_ it turns out.

The gunshot rings hollow and far yet, but unmistakable - Angela and Reinhardt exchange but one horrified look before breaking into a run proper.  It’s been years, but they’d recognize the sound that gun makes anywhere, and when exactly was the last time McCree has had to fire it here, among buildings, among allies? A warning shot? They should hope so.

The situation becomes only marginally clearer when they finally enter the courtyard through the cargo driveway, underneath the bridge - they see McCree first, up the slope of the entryway, nothing but a silhouette in the bright oranges and golds of the sunset behind him, and he goes from perfectly ready to strike, tall and imposing, to relaxing, within the matter of seconds. Peacekeeper catches the last glints of the sun, sending a wink of light their way as he twirls it expertly, then pockets it safely in his holster.

“Alright now!” he declares, to someone they can’t see yet, “can we all just stand still for a moment? Huh? That would be nice. I’m sure there’s a way for us to resolve this _calmly,_ without _any more-_ Whoa! Why’d you have to do that for?!”

At that point, Angela elects to ignore Reinhardt’s arm before her, stopping her from running into danger, because she simply has to see.

“Oh, hey Doc!” McCree grins when he notices her, but she wants to assess the rest - and what she meets with, is the rest of the current measly populace of the Watchpoint, their looks ranging from mildly baffled on Lena’s part, to outright angry on Torbjorn’s... And then there’s Genji, crouching over the crumpled figure of a man on the ground.

“What _happened here?!_ ” Angela demands, while Reinhardt roars: “Who is that?! Is he dead?”, and that seems to be enough to reanimate this odd picture, everyone’s attention slowly turning their way.

“Dead?” McCree huffs, patting his pockets for a cigarillo, lighting it with one expert flick of his wrist, “I sure as hell hope not? You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“No,” Genji sighs, “merely incapacitated him for a while.”

“ _Why?!_ ” Reinhardt demands, only marginally more lost than Angela, “who _is that?_ ”

“Is it him, Genji?” she asks, opting for a much softer tone, walking closer to him - the stranger’s face is turned away from her, from them all, only for Genji to see right now. The green of his visor seems to flicker briefly, before he nods.

“It is my brother,” he confirms.

She looks back at McCree, who merely shrugs, before sighing, making his way over to them somewhat sheepishly.

“Real stand up guy he was, at first,” he explains somewhat vaguely, to which Genji adds: “We - I encountered him during our mission. He agreed to accompany us back here, but _someone_ couldn’t keep their mouth shut.”

“Hey, now, don’t blame me!” McCree defends himself, “I was just trying to defuse a potentially tense situation!”

“Which _I_ had perfectly under control!”

“Yeah, with that arrow pointed at you?”

“Alright, _enough!_ ” Angela orders, “first, I’d like to deal with the apparently unconscious man lying before me. Pick him up, and all three of you, into the infirmary. _Right now._ ”

“Shouldn’t we be making sure he doesn’t attack anyone again, any time soon?” Lena offers.  
“She’s right,” Torbjorn adds, “what were you two thinking, just bringing him in here? How do you know he won’t disappear the first chance he gets, and tell everyone-”

“Tell everyone what, exactly?” McCree laughs, “about this merry little ragtag gathering of people? What is anyone going to do about us, really?”

“He himself is on the run from the authorities, I believe,” Genji remarks.

“Oh, so a fugitive! Even better!”

“Honestly, we should at least take that bow away from him...”

“I assure you, I don’t think he’s going to be much of a threat-”

“Why, because he’s been such a good brother up until this point?”

“McCree!”

“We do have those untouched containment cells on Level 1...”

“Enough! _Enough!_ ”

That seems to do the trick, and Angela is somewhat surprised to realize she is the one that made it happen.

“That’s enough,” she repeats, a bit quieter now, “Genji, pick that man up and bring him into my infirmary, _now._ McCree, with him.”

“But-”

“ _If_ it makes you feel better,” she quells even Reinhardt’s protests, “you can come with us and patrol outside the door, for all I care. Winston, why don’t you go make sure we’re still alone in the middle of nowhere? There. All settled.”

She doesn’t wait for McCree and Genji to follow her, knowing that they will - all that she can think of, all but stomping through the cold, quiet corridors, is the anger like a bitter taste at the back of her throat, clouding everything else. _This is not how it should be._ Reinhardt had been right - leaderless and without cause, so quick to sink into arguments, they’ve more than overstayed their welcome, but before they decide to pack their bags and go back where they all came from, there is actual work to do, it seems.

 

“Set him down there,” she orders, waiting for Genji to comply - this small room adjacent to her infirmary has equipment of its own, intended mostly as a makeshift ICU, but it also has a lock on its glass door, a fact that Reinhardt will no doubt approve of, hovering like an overprotective bear.

Nothing but exhaustion and a few cuts and scrapes here and there, that’s her diagnosis on the newcomer - she looks at his face, chiseled features softened somewhat by his involuntary sleep, and tries to look for a resemblance she will never be able to find, Genji’s face too destroyed underneath that visor to really be granted that luxury anymore. Still, she observes the intent care with which the man surveys his unconscious brother, and sees the unmistakable remnants of a bond there.

“He might sleep a tad longer than usual,” she explains gently, “the computer is reading a somewhat extreme dehydration, and a lack of... well, everything, from sleep to proper sustenance.”

“Could’a guessed that from those big fat bags under his eyes,” McCree notes, feet swinging as he slouches on the nearest stretcher, like a schoolboy, currently not smoking only because Angela expressly forbade him to.

Genji shoots him what must be an ugly look, before sighing, and finding a nearby chair.

“I meant what I said, he will not attack again,” he explains, and even though Reinhardt scoffs from his spot guarding the door, he continues mildly: “I know it is difficult to believe. But he has been tailing us - me - all the way from Japan, and when he first appeared to me at the mission, he wasn’t there to cause trouble. He wanted to help. Saved _you_ more times than one,” he reminds McCree sharply, to which the gunslinger grumbles something incomprehensible, folding his impressive frame to lie down on his stretcher.

“What _did_ happen on that mission?” Reinhardt expresses some curiosity.

“Why don’t we gather everyone and talk about it over dinner, huh,” McCree notes, face already hidden underneath his hat, the enviable ability to make himself comfortable wherever he happens to be.

“Yes,” Genji agrees for once, “we’ve uncovered quite a lot, but we need to make sense of it all, first.”

“Before that, let me look you over. Please?”

“I am alright,” Genji shakes his head, “I think I could do with some nutrients myself, if you have some lying around, but other than that, I feel fine, I promise. Look _him_ over-” he motions to McCree with his head, “he took a rough tumble or two.”

“As you wish,” Angela sighs.

"I'm good, too, Doc, you don't gotta worry about me," all that is visible of McCree's face is the frown underneath the rim of his hat.

"Yes, I can tell by the blood," Angela prods him, "sit up."

He obliges, slowly and reluctantly, making a show of suffering through every single second he is forced to stay awake, and she dabs at the scabbed bruise on his forehead, cleaning it thoroughly.

"What _happened_ to you two out there?" she tries again, and he rolls his eyes, glancing to where Genji has assumed a simple meditative position on a chair next to the newcomer's bed.

"It was... eh. Bit outnumbered for a second, that's all. _Hotshot_ there-" he points to the sleeping stranger, "turned up outta nowhere, started sniping at things. Guess we might have gotten into a bit of a... disagreement over his intentions on our way here. What you saw out there... Oh well. 'Scuse me if I happen to get a bit jumpy when there's an arrow pointed in my face."

"Is it really him?" Angela asks, almost ashamed for keeping quiet, "his brother?"

"Well, it is the same guy we tripped over in Hanamura, so I'm guessing yep," Jesse shrugs, rolling his shoulders back, stretching them, "okay, tell you what Doc, I'll go take a shower, count my bruises, and come see you later?"

"Whenever you need," she nods absentmindedly.

Later on, she will think there might have been something he wanted to say still, but right now, she is preoccupied with her other patient.

"He will be no trouble," Genji says quietly, and Angela drags a chair next to him, rebutting Reinhardt's pointed looks with: "Oh, come on, he is hardly a threat in his current state!" and ordering Genji to stay still while she checks over the ventilation of his suit.

"I will stay with him," Genji continues, "I do believe he really just wants to talk."

"I hope you're right," Angela nods, attempting not to feel unsettled at the calm with which he accepts her care, not a flinch as her fingers hover over the delicate plating of his armor. "I'll monitor him closely. This is just simple nutrition, if you'll let me give it to him."

Genji's nod is miniscule, and he finally unfastens his visor, gently opening it with a quiet hiss.

"I didn't plan for this,” he confesses, and the measure of... is it disappointment? Sadness? Whatever it may be, it colors his voice rougher. "I did my best to reach out to him, but McCree had to go and... Nevermind. It's hardly his fault. I just have to make sure that when Hanzo wakes, he will still be willing to talk."

"I'm sure he will," Angela offers what to her feels like empty reassurance, "he's going to be alright."

"Thank you."

Her eyes travel to the impressive curve of the bow propped up by the wall nearby, and she thinks, _just when you thought nothing could surprise you anymore_. Genji has told her about Hanzo before, spoke of him reluctantly at first, more often the more Angela came to know him - and whatever led him not to despise the man who'd struck him down and left him for dead, whatever made him capable of still saying his brother's name out loud and tell tales of him without so much as a sign of resentment, has always felt like something too crucially private, too incredibly complicated, for Angela to truly comprehend.

But the truth of the matter is, whatever coincidence has put the very same man in her infirmary, here at the tip of the world, she is glad for it. McCree was right, they're nothing but a mismatched group of vastly different people right now, but as long as there's work to do, as long as there are people to take care of, she has at least the semblance of a reason to stay. For now.

-

There is a thin line between independently investigating a hunch, with all the good intentions mind you, and actively searching for signs of illegal activity within one's own organization, and she crossed that line earlier today, officially requesting a sick day for the first time in her four years with Helix ("I didn't know you and Shadid were this close." was her boss's response, which made her stomach lurch), convinced that corrupting her home computer would be easier to explain than accidentally infecting her entire work network with... whatever this is.

Come to think of it, she might have crossed that same invisible line the very night she decided to withhold a crucial piece of evidence, but that isn't exactly something she can take back now, is it. Besides... well. This is hardly the first time someone has tried to take a swing at Helix and accuse them of wrongdoing, but no straightforward cases where her employer comes out on the other end utterly innocent have ever started with the covered up murder of an employee who only just happened to discover crucial information earlier that very day.

Fareeha doesn't believe in coincidences, and she knows her colleague didn't either, and if she wants to put both her mind and Zahra's memory at peace, she mustn't stop until she uncovers the truth.

She twirls the flash drive in between her fingertips - the first time she ran it, it looked like someone had breached her for sure, what with those visuals, that toy icon of a skull dancing on her screen, followed by file after file opening out of nowhere, familiar names and logos, information she had never been privy to before... And didn't exactly feel comfortable being privy to then, so she ended up yanking the drive out, leaving it locked in the bottom drawer of her desk for days, reluctant to return to it.

Every time she came back to her computer, though, she could have sworn it was there again, the fading specter of light violet, cackling at her.

"Why me, hm?" she wonders out loud, taking a sip of her iced tea, “I'm sure you meant to end up with someone else entirely. Zahra would have quarantined you the second she got the chance. I should probably...”

Stop talking to herself, that might be a good idea.

“Here goes nothing,” she announces, and plugs the flash drive back in.

Yet again, she has to sit through the initial panic when her screen, hell, most likely her entire home network, is overtaken by whatever virus or presence is loaded up on that thing, but this time, she clenches her teeth through it and watches, just watches, perfectly prepared to take notes if need be, if this is only a showcase destined to be over quicker than it started.

Helix is everywhere, the depth of the security breach becoming more and more apparent with the increasing amount of their facilities listed before her eyes, like someone is reciting a particularly monotone poem. Her boss' face, and his boss' face, appear as if in the form of mugshots, alongside other faces, from the Mayor of Cairo to the President herself, from whom she recognizes to be lowly mobsters, to people of international renown, like puzzle pieces someone is spilling on the floor before her, much quicker than she can categorize them or even begin to put them together. And whenever she thinks she might be getting some sort of a grasp on what's unfolding before her, the screen collapses into a neverending stream of computer code, which she couldn't read even if she wanted.

"I suppose going slower is not an option?" she grumbles, feeling a bit useless - all that she can do, seems to be _allowed to do_ , is watch.

None of what is presented to her makes a whole lot of sense without proper explanation, without the right kind of tools and knowledge to connect the dots, and yet again, she suspects that Zahra might have been the one this was supposed to end up with - on the off chance that she would have decided to decrypt it, they really might have ended up with _something_ of real value.

"Wait, Anubis?" she blurts out, quite pointlessly, when she manages to catch the title of this or that news article - it only shimmers on the screen for the fraction of a second, it seems, before disappearing again, and she curses quietly.

"What is this even about?" she demands, "what are you trying to tell me?"

As if prompted, the chaotic feed of information comes to a halt, a gentle glitch seizing the edges of the screen every now and then, like someone slammed a pause button too quick somewhere.

"Huh? That's it?"

_HARDLY._

Oh.

"Who am I... Am I speaking to someone?"

No response, but the word remains there in the bottom left corner of the screen, the underscore winking at her expectantly - she chooses to concentrate on what's right in front of her.

The screen now displays five different windows of varying sizes, but they all have the same prefix in their title: HLX, followed by a different numeric entry - they are Helix's camera feeds, and are now coming back to life - current, too, she learns from the timestamp on the largest one, a regular grainy city camera focused on the Temple of Anubis, of all things, old stone bathing in nothing but the distant glow of street lamps, as the halogens usually illuminating it have been shut off, the holographic police tape sealing off its entrance clearly visible.

Another window, another angle, this one she is unfamiliar with - from behind, judging by the darkness, a narrow back alley, the occasional flash of some nearby neons shedding some light on the graffiti desecrating the ancient walls of the temple. She sees a hooded figure appearing from around a corner, quick on their feet, face concealed too well - she leans closer, something strangely... she wouldn't go so far as to call it familiar, but there is _something_... Before she can really discern it, the person is gone again, and things make even less sense than before.

Unthinking, she taps on her screen to activate one of the smaller windows, and it seems that that amount of control, she is still allowed - it blows up bigger, and reveals a parking lot. _The_ parking lot, it turns out - the one in her workplace, nigh deserted now, save for a handful of cars, and yet again, next to no activity.

"Why are you showing me this?" she sighs, but whoever her distant companion is, they choose to remain silent.

The second to last window shows a highly confusing wide shot of the desert south outside Giza, nothing but stars and the occasional flicker of a car flying across the span of the sand - and she might have paid more attention to what looked like a light on the horizon, if it weren't for her noticing what's going on in the very last window, and switching over to it immediately.

Her insides clench in on themselves painfully - that's _her_ window she is looking at, directly from across the street, too, and...

"Hold on."

That isn't her in the feed - or at least not her right now. The date says today, and the timestamp reads _right now_ , but the Fareeha in front of her is nothing but a shadow behind a fluttering curtain, slouched on the sofa, a soft ever-changing glow of the TV... Certainly not sitting in front of her computer staring in mild horror.

 _IT'S A LOOP I'M FEEDING THEM FOR THE TIME BEING_ , her nameless companion is back, _GO ON, TAKE A LOOK_.

She all but lunges across the room, throwing the curtains open, and there it is, a pole on the other side of the street, there, below what must be some sort of transformator - a cluster of indistinguishable devices, several of which are no doubt cameras, one of which is inevitably pointed right in her very face.

Her heart is suddenly tolling like a bell, and she remains frozen in place for a moment, incapable of making sense of the situation - the fact that her own company has been keeping tabs on her behind her back is one thing, the means with which she found out, a whole other kettle of fish.

She allows herself a moment to stomach everything, a couple of deep breaths, and she is on her way back to her computer, resolved now to discover more.

"What's going on here?" she demands, already reaching for her phone, when the screen goes pitch black, everything she just saw disappearing as fast as it came, admittedly much later than she would have anticipated.

 _I WOULDN'T DO THAT IF I WERE YOU_ , purple block letters read in a somewhat intimidating manner, and she squints at it.

"I'm going to report all of this." Admittedly, her voice sounds a tad less firm than she'd like.

_BEST OF LUCK WITH THAT. YOU ARE THE ONE SITTING ON CONCEALED EVIDENCE, FAREEHA AMARI._

"So I've noticed! What do you expect me do with it, then?"

_FOLLOW THE BREADCRUMBS._

"Helpful," she groans.

_GO MAKE SURE FOR YOURSELF. HELIX WILL LET YOU DO THAT, WON’T THEY? PLUG ME BACK IN WHEN YOU’RE AT A COMPANY COMPUTER._

"Now, if you’re suggesting that I breach-"

_I’M NOT SUGGESTING ANYTHING, JUST OFFERING A PLAN OF ACTION. LOOK FOR THE EVER-WATCHFUL EYE._

“The... huh?”

_YOU WILL KNOW IT WHEN YOU SEE IT. NOW, I BELIEVE YOU HAVE A VISITOR._

The camera feed is back, and this time around, it’s real - she can plainly see herself, a figure standing tense before the computer. When she whips her head around to look outside, then back, the video flickers, like a momentary malfunction, and then the camera tilts downward, and zooms in - and that is _some_ visitor indeed.

She recognizes the car immediately, and feels an inexplicable panic rising - unceremoniously, she grabs the flash drive and stows it back in the fake bottom of her desk drawer, and frantically looks around her apartment for more obvious proof of... well, losing her mind.

For all she knows, Osman is just here to talk - she just wishes her gut feeling weren’t so reliable all the time, because right now, it’s ringing any and all alarm bells there are.

The ringing of the doorbell is a jarring sound, and she stares at the face of her boss on the display by her door for the longest time, sunglasses on, finishing a cigarette, looking as patient, as _normal,_ as ever, before answering.

“Oh, um... good evening? Sir?”

There, that sounded normal, and not at all like she’s freaking out, yes?

“Amari,” crackles Osman’s voice, “sorry to disturb you so late. Can I come in for a second?”

“I’m, uh...”

“It’ll only take a minute,” he flashes the entrance camera a quick grin.

“...Alright, of course. Yeah. Buzzing you in.”

She has about a minute to compose herself, convince herself to stay calm, that there’s always a rational explanation for _everything,_ before he arrives - bodyguard first, of course, a strange man all but barging into her living room and looking around like there’s a bomb under every piece of furniture, followed by Osman himself, looking, admittedly, much more relaxed.

“Evening,” he greets her broadly, scanning her living room curiously, in a way that sets her teeth on edge.

“How can I help you, sir?” Fareeha demands, fighting the constant urge to make her hands do _something,_ rearrange the magazines on her end table, fold that messy throw on her sofa... maybe reach for the gun beneath the sink in the kitchen. “Would you like a cup of tea? Anything?”

“Not necessary,” he waves his hand dismissively, “I thought I should let you know that I got a very interesting courtesy call from the Omnic Embassy earlier today. Would have been nice if _you_ had given me any sort of notice before going in, but hey.”

“It’s in the report I’m working on right now,” she squints at him, incapable of judging his reaction, beyond a frown of his own, because of the damn sunglasses. _It’s almost midnight, and you’re indoors, for crying out loud._

“Of course it is,” he sighs, like she’s a child letting him down, “listen, I came here to let you know that you can relax. About the case, I mean. It’s closed.”

“Closed - did we find the killer while I wasn’t looking?”

“No, we’re just passing it over to city police,” he offers - looks _pleased_ about it.

“We can’t do that,” Fareeha counters firmly, “it’ll get _buried_ under red tape, you know this. They’ll spend months _considering evidence,_ and then when they finally find out they have none, they’ll declare the case dead. Zahra deserves better than that.”

“Look, Shadid was a valuable asset,” he says, no real emotion behind it, “and we will feel her loss greatly. But the truth of the matter is, our resources are needed elsewhere, and city police has jurisdiction. I’m passing it over to them, and that’s final.”

She has two options now, the way she sees it - kick up a fuss right here, argue with him, demand explanations... Or work with the fact that he came to her place to deliver a message that could have well waited until tomorrow, seemingly blase about it all, clearly not telling her everything. And there is a camera across the street with a perfect view of the inside of her apartment...

“Alright, I understand,” she forces calm professionalism into her voice, “shall I pass my report over to them as well? It might have some valuable findings.”

“If you want,” he nods somewhat noncommittally.

“Alright then. Was that all you wanted to tell me? Are you sure I can’t interest you in a beer?” she chats idly, making her way across the living room, to the window once again, “it’s a nice night.”

She pulls the almost translucent curtain away opening the window halfway, the anti-insect barrier coming alive with a gentle buzz - and there, on the pole on the other side of the street, a bundle of tech, flickering different colors every now and then, like a particularly odd chandelier.

She turns back to Osman just in time to catch him scowling, eyes darting from her to where she was also looking a second ago. _Got you._

“Maybe next time,” he summons a bitter smile at best, “I’ll leave you to it.”

A beat, a silence in between them that can be interpreted in many ways, _on edge_ being one of them.

“Of course,” she smiles, “it was kind of you to stop by. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

He visibly relaxes.

“Tomorrow. Good night, Amari.”

She doesn’t bother showing him out, and remains instead at the window until she sees him get into his car and drive away, hands folded behind her back, shoulders tense, jaw clenched, working through all this new information. A camera pointed at her living room, an unexpected visit in the middle of the night, and a pointless one at that - the only reason he let himself be recorded by that, assuming he _knew,_ was because he needed to be.

The decision is a split-second thing - there will be a log of this in the company computers tomorrow, but as Security Chief, she has _some_ means of explaining that away, and for now, she needs answers.

The Helix logo takes over her home screen in a wink, and she punches her credentials in - the car Osman arrived in was unmarked, a personal one, and he never would have made the mistake of forgetting to check out before leaving work, but he _did_ have two other Helix employees with him... There.

She recognizes both names, having hired them some time ago, and both their rosters for tonight read ‘ _Office Hours_ ’. Right.

 _Locate,_ she orders the computer, and one of them was smarter than the other, at least - _his_ phone was left behind at HQ, making its location as inconspicuous as they come, but the other... Well, the other is now speeding at a little over a hundred miles per hour in an unmarked car on its way outside the city.

The decision she has to make now might very well be the one to cost her her career, but she doesn’t half like thinking in absolutes - still, she takes some time to consider it, rubbing her face, sighing.

In so many ways, she really came into her own in Helix. The army was like prep school, too many rigid rules and too little action aside from besting her own records in training ranges, but then came the job offer, and with it, a real turning point.

She’s been steadily rising through the ranks, the job straightforward enough, filling her with a sense of purpose, while also allowing her certain freedoms, be it her modestly luxurious apartment, or long paid holidays she usually spends back in Canada with her father. She signed up for the Raptora program out of sheer excitement, as a techie first, offering up her degree and enthusiasm for the challenge, and ending up piloting a suit of her own, the highlight of her career as far as she’s concerned. All in all, she has been blessed with a job she is excited to wake up for early in the morning - at least until now.

She could force herself to retain whatever blissful ignorance she has left, pretend like she can’t sense the powerful moorings of her sense of security slowly loosening, giving way, or she could follow the one thing she believes in no matter what, job or no job - justice is still a powerful enough motivator.

“Oh, there will _definitely_ be a log of _this_ at work tomorrow,” she sighs, griping to no one in particular, as she moves to activate the series of protocols that lead to an almost inaudible hiss, the wall next to her wardrobe sliding aside smoothly, revealing the best of her evening gowns.

She has several newer models at her disposal at work, but this one is a nostalgic keepsake, so to speak - bright blue, simpler angles, the visor a familiar warm yellow, it is the first suit she ever piloted, the first one she’d helped build from scratch, the one she didn’t really try and convince her superiors to let her keep, she simply _did,_ citing her need to be prepared at all times, filling all the necessary forms, making sure to eliminate all questions before they could be asked. Now, it remains connected to both her company and home networks, like a large overpriced coffee maker, the gentle whirr of it an ever-present comfort, and she adores it dearly, akin to a household cat.

“Hi there,” she greets it, “you and I are going for a little evening stroll.”

 

She already has about a half a dozen excuses for tomorrow at the ready by the time she straps in - and hey, if anyone is keeping an eye on the feed of her apartment right now, they might already be starting to ask a lot of questions, connecting a lot of dots.

But as she revs up the jets in her backyard balcony, several windows lighting up below her, the sound far from the usual neighborhood disturbance, all she can think of is the ridiculous irony of it all - the disembodied voice beyond the flash drive, the lens pointed at her home, _the ever-watchful eye..._ If following her boss’ car doesn’t provide answers to at least _some_ of those unknowns, then she might as well resign first thing tomorrow.

All worries do dissipate, for a second at least, when she ascends, her house, her entire street, soon turning into but a speck on the living, breathing map of the city painted below her - she makes sure to alert mission control at the nearest airport, they’re used to her squad over there anyway, and then she’s headed after the blinking red dot in the corner of her visor. There’s enough fuel for about two hours of sustained flight, more if she travels carefully and lets the reserves replenish over time, and she resolves not to run out in the middle of the desert, at least.

I THINK I JUST ATE SOMETHING THATS BEEN HERE FOR A DECADE, big block letters scatter across her feed, and Fareeha is confused for a second - did her suit latch onto one of the local radio stations by mistake again, slightly faulty thing that it is? But no, it’s just interfacing with her phone stowed safely away, she realizes much to her own amusement.

I DIDNT MISS RATIONS, LEMME TELL YOU, Jesse writes earnestly, WHY W WONT LET US SHOP LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE IS BEYOND ME. HOW YOU DOIN? ANGELA SAYS HI.

She laughs at that, _almost_ all of it, anyway - let’s see, how _is she_ doing? If only he knew.

“As well as can be,” she dictates her response out loud, purposefully ignoring the last part of his message, “I seem to recall R making a mean ration sausage stew, ask him about it. Stay safe. All of you.”

_All of you._

There is, to her surprise, no place she’d rather be right now than halfway across the world, where her family seem to be gathering once again - be it curiosity or simply the promise of familiar faces, the idea is so very tempting.

Perhaps once all of this is concluded...

“Well now, where are _you_ going?”

There is no trail she would particularly _expect_ the car to take, but past the industrial district and into the desolation of field after field of solar panels beyond the city limits, is a slightly unexpected choice even so.

She perhaps would have anticipated a meeting in one of the shadier parts of Giza, or even a straight path home to the luxurious villa Osman lives in, overlooking the pyramids and proving Fareeha wrong after all, but this... There is nothing here but automated energy sources, literal plains of them, winding up dunes after dunes, until sand becomes detrimental to the function of the panels... And nothing but the desolate loneliness of the desert beyond that.

Helix does have a research station somewhere in this area, it’s true, but it’s a rather less exciting destination than she would have guessed...

She hovers, well out of sight, and watches the car park in front of a very low, narrow building - the control center of the entire power plant. Idly, she orders her suit to take several pictures, Osman getting out of the car, waiting in front of the entrance for a moment, then walking inside, his bodyguards staying behind. Then nothing, nothing for ages.

She doesn’t consider herself one to easily overreact, but surely... she searches, with the limited connection she has, for anything her company has on log about this place, but it appears as boring as they come, about ten employees altogether, producing masses of boring reports on a weekly base, on power consumption and energy saving, the safety of the power plant, scheduled maintenances...

“This doesn’t make any sense,” she speculates out loud.

None of it does, really - if she is wrong about Osman, if he doesn’t know about the camera, or whatever else is going on, then should she confide in him? She does possess her own jurisdictions, as Security Chief, but surely...

“ _Security breach detected at: Home Address. Alarm went off at: 11:32 PM, device destroyed at: 11:33 PM._ ”

“What?!”

The thrusters of her suit whine, strained, as she pivots to look back towards the gleaming jewel of the city, as if she were able to see _anything_ at such a distance. An alarm going off at home, right _now?_ Convenient that she was away, or orchestrated that way?

That will be determined later - right now, she has to reevaluate for what feels like about the hundredth time just tonight, and in the blink of an eye, she is hurtling back towards Giza.

 

She can see it from afar, her suit already running environmental diagnostics - her current one docked at her workplace would be able to give her a 3D scan of her apartment from outside, electrical outputs, even tap into the nearest network of security cameras to identify anything and everything out of the ordinary, but as it is, she has to make do with a simplistic heat signature reading - there’s no one inside right now, but she still doesn’t bother deactivating her armor before going in.

The destruction and disarray is so thorough it renders her motionless for a moment, incapable of doing anything but taking it in, silent, shocked. Her lamp, her end table, her TV all on the ground, broken, even her couch cushions slashed open. Books out of their shelves, strewn about on the floor, her damn _plant_ knocked over, a sad display of scattered dirt... She hurries to her desk, drawers pulled out, their contents thrown out, and at least there’s that - the fake bottom remains undiscovered, as does the fingerprint reader masquerading as a knag in the wood, and the flash drive is still there, small, black, unassuming.

It must have been what they were looking for, it must have been, there’s nothing else missing, _they might be waiting around for you to show them the way to it..._

She stands in the midst of her wrecked living room, perfectly still, for the longest time. She reports it in, speaks calmly on record, sends a copy of it to her workplace. She rescues the plant. She watches as the vacuum cleaner sucks up shards of broken glass, whirring in high gear at the effort.

She only ever exits her suit an hour later, and keeps her gun strapped to her side.

The idea occurs to her as she stands before her window, glaring at the pole on the other side of the street, perhaps incredibly recklessly - she draws the curtains firmly and plugs the flash drive back in with a bit too much force.

_OUCH. SOMEONE DID A PRETTY GOOD JOB OF WIPING THIS BABY CLEAN._

“Oh, yes,” Fareeha snarls, “how convenient that that happened the second I wasn’t here, and left _this_ -” she prods the flash drive, “behind.”

_OH, YOU THINK I HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH THIS, CARI_ _ÑA? AFTER EVERYTHING I’VE SHOWN YOU?_

“I don’t have a single reason to trust you.”

_WHICH IS PROBABLY SMART. I CAN TELL YOU THIS - SOMEONE CONVENIENTLY DISABLED OUR FRIENDLY LITTLE WATCHBIRD ACROSS THE STREET ABOUT A MINUTE BEFORE THE ALARM WENT OFF._

“Well, isn’t that convenient.”

_VERY. HOWEVER..._

“Yes?”

_WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW WHERE THAT COMMAND CAME FROM? I CAN TELL YOU, IN EXCHANGE FOR THAT LITTLE SERVICE WE TALKED ABOUT EARLIER._

Ever since Zahra’s death, Fareeha has felt like she’s lost all agency of her own - like the inexplicable tangle of accidents happening around her is utterly and completely out of her control, a sensation she dislikes so deeply it sets her teeth on edge. She is used to seeing the root of the problem, _attacking it,_ and then solving it. Yet again, she can’t help but wonder what her deceased colleague would have done, how she would have handled the situation - better than Fareeha herself? She is hardly going to find out now, is she.

_When you walk into the unknown, you’d better be prepared to discover things you never wanted to find in the first place._

What would her mother have done?

For a bright second, perfectly alone and thoroughly disoriented in a world she thought she knew so well, Fareeha sees her clear as day before her, a mirage in her mind’s eye, strong and proud.

If anything, her mother taught her to fight, to win but also to defend, and she taught her never to give up, no matter how bleak things looked.

“Show me,” Fareeha orders.

She guesses the origin of the commands for the camera even before her unknown companion confirms it, and with that, she is resolved.

Sleep doesn’t come until much, much later that night, and even then, listening to the otherwise familiar sounds coming from the street below her windows and waiting to catch anything out of the ordinary, the only comfort she finds is in the thin sliver of light coming from around the corner, indicating that the docking station for her suit is still open, the original Raptora her silent, reliable guardian.

 

-

 

He wakes up to an unfamiliar blue glow, although the faint smell of antiseptic and anxiously perfect cleanliness is more recognizable, spelling _hospital._

A little less than that, he realizes when his surroundings come into focus - the room he is in is sparse and small, the equipment around his bed simplistic, somewhat rudimental even. A glass wall separates him from a larger lab, a work desk and a chair, some cabinets... Empty now.

A calm finds him when he notices his bow resting at the foot of his bed, and he sits up abruptly - amazingly, he is still wearing his own clothes, and upon checking himself over, there is only one IV to be removed from under the plaster securing it to his forearm.

His mind is thoroughly his own, which is refreshing - he remembers everything, no inconvenient headaches or dizzy spells, and scoffs at the pointlessness of it all.

It’s clear now that following his brother was a foolish idea to say the least - he would rather like to see him one more time, ask his questions, but right now, getting the hell out of here seems the better option.

There is no resistance, not at the glass door separating his unit and the lab, not the proper one leading into the corridor outside, and that should perhaps worry him, but he has a singular idea in mind - get some distance between him and this place first, think over everything second. Impossible to do that here, with complete strangers making assumptions about him, about his brother, about both of them.

Nigh soundlessly, he dashes through the seemingly endless corridor, bow at the ready - only three arrows at his disposal, but he’s made do with less in much worse situations, and something tells him he might even escape without having to fire a single one.

The place is massive, that much he recalls from when he first arrived here, and although he didn’t have a lot of time to familiarize himself with the layout of it before things got tense, he does know there are very few people here, too few to cover _all_ the escape routes.

“...Yes, I know, but that doesn’t change the fact that we should at least _ask him_ first.”

That voice, he doesn’t recognize, but there are two sets of footsteps headed his way, and he can either make a run for it through a _very_ long corridor, or hope for the best, and - yes, one of the doors gives way when he presses its lock, and he finds himself hiding in a cramped room full of meaningless junk, waiting for the footsteps to pass him.

He peeks out just in time to catch the sight of a white lab coat disappearing behind the far corner, and resumes his retreat.

“ _There is no need to run,_ ” a mellow voice informs him, no doubt the station computer, momentarily shaking his composure, “ _we mean you no harm. Dr Ziegler wishes to perform some more tests, but you are not a prisoner here. Do not be alarmed._ ”

He simply scoffs at it, but it seems to be telling the truth, at least to some degree - all doors open before him like he’s just another regular face here, and nobody is hurrying to intercept him.

The dry, scorching hot air outside is like a slap in the face, but he still welcomes it, squinting as his eyes readjust from the artificial light indoors, to the rich orange glow of the setting sun before him. The loading bay is quite the sight, but it’s too much open space to his liking - the rocky slope to his right looks promising, something he might be able to scale.

He only stops when he’s high enough to feel secure again, clutching onto the rusty railing of what must be some sort of a comm tower - he risks a look behind and below, the compound like a children’s playhouse from up here, so perfectly deserted... He waits, foolishly, for a breath or two, scanning for a figure of silver and green to appear, but then he scoffs at himself, dismissing the thought. This is a better outcome - he has no place here, not this close.

He exchanges metal for rock, climbing over the railing ever so carefully, and sees the faint shimmer of a city on the horizon - Gibraltar is not a city he particularly cares for, but if it will allow him the room and time to regroup and think, then it is as good as any other.

“Leavin’ already?”

His bow is at the ready with the slightest fraction of a thought, but the man before him isn’t pointing a gun at him - not this time, at least.

“Out of my way,” he orders, and the man chuckles - he remembers the gunslinger well, the ridiculous way he fought, no regard whatsoever for precision _or_ strategy, the infuriating way he argued, all the way over here... The way he pointed his sixshooter in his face without a second’s hesitation, the gun transforming from a useless relic to something very real and very dangerous within the blink of an eye.

“It’s not very nice of you, refusing our hospitality like this,” the man - McCree is his name, and if that isn’t the most laughably transparent nickname ever conceived - comments.

“I have no need of it,” he refuses, “I’ve achieved what I’ve come here to do.”

“You have, have you?”

That gives him some pause, makes him hesitate, search for some meaning in the half-stranger’s face. Back stares a perfect mask of blase amusement, the lazy smirk of someone with next to no stakes in the current game, but a desire to play nevertheless.

“Don’t presume to know a single thing about me,” he dismisses the man, “or my brother. Tell him what you like, but let me pass now. Do not follow me. Any of you.”

He would never admit it, but the fact that the caricature cowboy actually does step aside, surprises him to no end - he keeps his eyes on him at all times as he moves past him, to where the jagged rock slopes downward, a path rarely used, but clearly _usable._ He gauges McCree’s reactions, his options, tries to guess the likeness of being shot in the back... And then the man shrugs, offering a grin that is equal parts unsettling and annoying, and he has to restrain himself not to groan in sheer frustration.

He breaks off into a run, descending the unsteady slope with ease.

“It was a real pleasure meeting you, Shimada Hanzo!” the cowman bellows behind him, gleeful as ever, and Hanzo rolls his eyes toward the sky. Yes, the more distance he puts between himself and this place, the better.

In the city, there will be food, and a room to purchase for the night, and the freedom to consider his next moves - perhaps watch from a distance for some time, try and come up with another opportunity to talk to his brother, on his terms.

He feels a lingering veil of exhaustion over his senses, but it’s nothing he isn’t already used to - he hates to admit it, but however long his unwanted rest in the compound’s infirmary was, it had a positive effect.

Soon enough, he happens upon a road, or something resembling it anyway, and a steady tempo brings him closer and closer to civilisation - at one point, he comes face to face with the headlights of a frantic driver, the car swerving off the driveway some distance before him, dust rising in great clouds behind its wheels. He watches it stop in a hurry by what looks like nothing more than yet another unused comm tower, halfway between the compound - Watchpoints, they call them - and the city, a tall, narrow contraption of rusty metal, and curiosity stalls him until he sees a light come alive atop it, an urgently blinking red. He half expects a response to come from the seemingly silent hunk of rock on the horizon, almost impossible to identify as anything but that at first sight, but nothing comes, and after some time, the car drives away once more, Hanzo following it.

A hailing signal, perhaps, from the heyday of Overwatch, when all it took was for the city to call, and the organisation answered?

He thinks he can see the source of it, far in the distance, smoke rising high, something wrong in the city, but that’s hardly something to concern himself with. Never should have agreed to come here in the first place.

Let what’s left of who people once called _heroes_ deal with that, and let Shimada Hanzo disappear once more - he hardly belongs here.

He enters the outskirts of Gibraltar to the chorus of police sirens singing a high-pitched, agitated melody in the distance, and ignores and avoids every single one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this was a hoot. I knew getting into this fic that I'd end up with massive chunks of text, mostly due to the nature of the storytelling and the multiple POVs, but dear lord, I hope it was at least partially digestible. I promise we're getting to some much more exciting stuff, but in the meantime, everything horrible in the world happens to Fareeha Amari at once, Angela misses the good old days, and Hanzo, well, he probably misses the days he didn't know who McCree was. Hope you guys enjoyed it, tell me what you think and as always, find me at [my Tumblr](http://bilboo.tumblr.com) to chat!


	5. Sic Transit Gloria

“So, your brother’s gone again.”

“Mm, I figured.”

“You alright?”

Genji stands motionless next to him, the gleam of his visor pointed towards the blinking city lights on the horizon, his arms crossed leisurely, as if the two of them are simply out here for a casual smoke and chat.

“I wish I got here two minutes earlier, sure,” he offers, and McCree huffs a laugh - Genji really did appear not a moment after the older Shimada ran off skidding down the rocky slope and towards Gibraltar, but as much as Jesse had expected him to follow, Genji just sighed, and stood there. Has been standing there all this time.

“I guess I thought he really was invested in talking, since he went to such great lengths to come to our aid.”

“Sorry it didn’t work out,” Jesse shrugs, “he seems a real fickle kind of guy.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Genji laughs, “I suppose none of us really know how we’d react to having a gun pulled on us and then waking up in a strange infirmary.”

“Hey now,” McCree grumbles, “you left out the part where  _ you _ were the one who knocked him out.”

“That’s true. Things rarely go the way I expect with Hanzo.”

Not that Jesse himself half knew what to expect, since the very first moment he met Genji’s brother - the retreat from the Deadlock den had been a bit chaotic, and the drive to the rendezvous point Winston had provided them with quite long, but Hanzo accompanied them without a word of complaint, even offered to drive after they settled on traveling through the night, to escape the possibility of anyone who might decide to tail them, also catching up with them...

He glared, a lot, and exchanged with Genji the occasional sentence in Japanese, too quick for Jesse to understand, but other than that, everything seemed fine - and McCree didn’t figure the opportunity would present itself to ask Genji about how he  _ really _ felt, to maybe grill his brother a little bit about his  _ actual _ intentions, until much later. There and then, he simply agreed to let Hanzo come with them, explanations to be had later, after the immediate danger had passed.

Besides, he had his own demons to contend with. The insane eyes of the man he wrestled last, before an arrow in his back ended that particular scuffle before it could turn deadly for either or both of them, remained in his mind for the duration of their ride back here - even now, he remembers the ferocity in them, tastes it with a stark clarity on his tongue, his snarled insults, the mention of Reyes’ name, unheard for so long,  _ the old guard, acting so tough, and all of you still ending up bleeding out somewhere fucking pathetic _ ... Like a curse, a trigger word, like someone had been  _ waiting _ to piss him off in that particular way for a long time. Like they  _ knew. _

By the time they could see the dark mass of The Rock on the horizon, Jesse had half decided to pack his things the very next day and be on his way again, before the anger of Deadlock could catch up with him again - only this time, not just him, but the others, too...  _ Friends, _ whatever that word had once meant. People who didn’t deserve to be wading through his crap alongside him.

Genji and Hanzo began arguing at some point as they approached the Watchpoint, after Genji started explaining the security measures necessary for them to remain undetected for now - the older Shimada found it ridiculous, what they were, in his words,  _ playing at, _ and urged Genji to come away with him, to which his brother objected rather sternly... All in all, Jesse  _ really _ didn’t mean to take sides, but, well, you never quite know when or where, or  _ whom, _ you’re going to end up pulling your gun at.

“Come on now, we’re all hospitable people here.”

The tip of Hanzo’s arrow had glittered in the last rays of the setting sun finding their way to the courtyard - out of the corner of his eye, Jesse could see the rest, confused, wary, and yes, in hindsight, they really should have settled it  _ before _ they stepped foot back in the place, should have called ahead...

“Hanzo, nobody here means to hurt you. You must understand-”

An almost imperceptible flinch, Jesse remembers, as a considerable amount of the archer’s composure still seemed to be affected by his brother’s presence. Genji hadn’t shared much from their encounter back in Japan, but in some way, McCree imagined it must have gone down the same.

And behind his own eyes, the persistent itch of opportunities untaken, blood racing through his veins, the perfect shot lined up, only one target in sight...

“I don’t have  _ the time, _ ” Hanzo had declared firmly, somehow the words were so perfectly clear in that moment, and it might have been a warning shot, might have missed him, or it might have pierced his heart, it was somewhat difficult to tell at that moment, because even before the bowstring spurred the arrow his way, McCree’s fingers closed around Peacekeeper, and the shot was like a dull slap among the concrete, echoing off it. The arrow clattered uselessly off a crate close by, and the archer’s eyes widened with the realization.

“Alright now!” McCree was quick to pocket the gun again, raising his hands instead, palms open,  _ look at me, who am I ever going to hurt, huh? No one, that’s who. _ “Can well just stand still for a moment? Huh? That would be nice...”

But before he could finish  _ that _ tirade, Hanzo lay on the ground, incapacitated by one swift blow from his own brother, and it didn’t occur to Jesse until some time later, but Genji’s sword had been drawn as well.

 

“Well, I guess we have more pressing things to deal with right now,” McCree offers, and it’s a bit impossible to tell what Genji might be thinking these days, but after some more glaring towards the quickly changing hues of the sunset, he nods curtly, turning away.

“He’ll resurface if he wants to,” he decides, probably trying to convince himself, more than anyone else, “let’s go report what we found.”

 

_ What they found _ doesn’t look particularly pleasant, juxtaposed with all the rest of the bullshit happening worldwide. It was Genji, quick thinking on his feet, who snapped a blurry picture or a dozen of the LumeriCo logos scattered across Deadlock containers, but  _ that _ conspiracy doesn’t even bother McCree, if he’s being honest with himself. His old gang has been sprawling in every conceivable direction since the day he left them for good, he knows his - he expects this. There’s no stopping it, and they aren’t here to pull away the curtain on big worldwide behind the scenes machinations, at least not over  _ this _ dinner.

No, right now, there is an ancient Titan rusting in a Deadlock warehouse, and Jesse’s ghosts are going to have to wait until  _ after _ they make sense of  _ that. _

“Nobody just  _ rebuilds _ those things. It needs an omnium to wake up, and the last time I checked, there wasn’t one hiding under Spanish dirt.”

Torbjorn’s voice almost doesn’t betray the anger underneath - seeing the less than savory results of one’s creations even after years, decades, probably isn’t on anyone’s bucket list, McCree supposes.

“So who would benefit from just storing it?” Lena squints, “why is it even  _ there _ ?”

“Well, you’ve got the Svyatogorsk patrolling Russia, which is a very successful project, or so I hear,” Winston scratches his chin, “perhaps if someone  _ did _ manage to reactivate it-”

“It’s impossible, I’m telling you!” Torbjorn spits.

“Well, alright. I imagine this is  _ not _ what you expected to discover, following your lead.”

It takes him a second to realize that that question was aimed at him. What  _ was he _ expecting to discover, anyway?

“Uh, no, not really. I guess I wanted to find out more about... well. I don’t know about you lot, but Titans or not, I ain’t gonna rest easy until I know what’s up with people stinking of Blackwatch.”

“McCree was recognized, weren’t you?” Genji offers, a bit inconveniently. Jesse shuffles in his seat as everyone’s eyes are now on him.

“Yeah, you might call it that. I didn’t recognize  _ him, _ but the guy was Blackwatch. Used to be. I don’t know. Felt weird. Can’t really say.”

“How is that possible?” Angela frowns.

“Gee, Doc, I don’t know. You know we were a, uh, how do I put this delicately... A particular bunch. It’s not exactly shocking to me that some of my former  _ colleagues _ would be pretty solid additions to any old evil plot, or organization, or what have you.”

She isn’t satisfied with that answer, not in the least, he can see as much, but the continuation of  _ that _ discussion isn’t happening until later.

“Do you think it might be at all possible for you to work that angle further?” Winston asks, “quite a number of old Blackwatch files were encrypted or eradicated so thoroughly that even Athena has had some issues unearthing them. The connections are unclear. If you can think of any possible lead...”

“If  _ Athena _ can’t find anything, I don’t know how much help I could possibly be,” McCree huffs a laugh, “but I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” Winston nods, “Athena will file this with all the rest, and maybe we can start connecting  _ some _ dots, at least. Lena, I believe there was something you wanted to share with us?”

“Right, yeah,” she unfurls from her childlike position, curled up like a cat on the same chair the size of which is barely enough to offer McCree himself  _ any _ comfort whatsoever, “remember how I said I knew a guy in the Omnic Embassy back in London? Well, I finally heard back from him...”

And so on, and so forth. McCree opens himself his second beer, toasting quietly with Reinhardt as Lena explains her part of the investigations, and he doesn’t know about the big guy, but Jesse himself is quickly losing a sense of direction in all this. There is a Big Bad they gotta find before it finds them, but then, isn’t that always the case? It was the case when the original Overwatch was falling apart, on its last legs - something that Reyes knew, and Morrison probably knew as well, something they were being  _ steered towards. _ Someone wanted to put an end to them then, and perhaps, the same someone doesn’t want them digging today, but really, what does it matter?

The sway they had back then, all over the world, people actually  _ listening, _ that’s long gone, and will never be regained. There’s  _ eight of them _ in this room, for crying out loud, eight people with very different ideas about what constitutes justice, and truth, and whatnot, and there isn’t a single unifying presence, or an idea, or anything, not to mention the hundreds, thousands of  _ other  _ people, the hive mind that made Overwatch so very successful in the first place, the  _ drive _ behind uniting a lot of different ideas and beliefs... Why even try and resurrect any of that?

“ _ Apologies for the interruption, _ ” Athena in fact pipes up at the best possible moment, cutting short Winston’s tirade about yet another absolutely necessary security measure, “ _ but my proximity scanners just registered something interesting. _ ”

“Show us,” Winston nods, and the blueprints of their base turn into a camera feed of the outside of it, specifically the northern part that looks towards Gibraltar, and in the darkness of the night, a singular red light winks at them in steady intervals, far too close to be coming from the city itself.

“What is that?” Lena leans in closer.

“ _ I believe someone has activated what we used to know as the hailing tower, _ ” Athena offers.

“ _ Those  _ things are still around?” Reinhardt voices the general opinion.

“What’s a hailing tower?” Brigitte, the only newcomer, asks.

“They’re a sort of a... last line of defense kind of thing,” Winston explains, “back in the day, this Watchpoint used to go dark for prolonged periods of time, but the crew living here had a, uh... Well, they were on rocky, but ultimately nice terms with the city, so the hailing towers were set up for the instances when Gibraltar needed to send a short but obvious message to the people in here. It’s nothing but a beacon. An SOS. Very outdated.”

“But very effective,  _ back in the day, _ ” Angela adds, her face one dark frown, “but whoever knows about it  _ today, _ is either mocking us, or threatening us.”

“Could be someone actually needs our help?” Lena offers.

“If that’s the case, that someone knows we’re here,” Winston points out.

“ _ My external cameras do not reach that far, _ ” Athena continues, “ _ and I am not monitoring any unusual movement in the area. _ ”

“Your brother did make a run for it towards the city,” Jesse notes to Genji.

“Yeah, but I have trouble believing he’d waste his time fiddling with a rusty old transmission array.”

“Maybe we should go check it out?” Lena says, half out the door already.

“And maybe we don’t fancy walking into a trap,” McCree huffs, “seems kinda convenient, don’t you think?”

“Someone  _ could be _ testing if we respond at all,” Angela agrees.

“And responding in any way is very dangerous right now,” Winston sighs, “the shields on this place are a far cry from what they used to be, and we have no idea who’s watching.”

“ _ Winston. The signal is repeating at a rather frantic pace. Furthermore _ -” The holo projection changes to a news feed from the city, several overlapping windows all reporting on the same chaos. “- _ the agitation in the city is unusually high. _ ”

“You don’t say,” Jesse groans, while Lena leans in closer, squinting at the projection.

“Something... exploded?” she tries to make a sense of it.

“Well, there’s the fire department,” Brigitte points to the tiny flashing dots of sirens.

“And the police, see, nice and proper,” McCree sighs, “obviously, the city has things under control. I don’t really see why we should be getting involved-”

“Whoa!”

“What the hell was that?”

The entire room is briefly illuminated with a brilliant orange, as yet another explosion shakes the city, and the chatter becomes more frantic, the cameras erratic.

“Athena?”

“ _ The source of the explosion is unclear. It happened in close proximity to the financial district, I believe. Several reporters are on scene, but it is almost impossible to make an accurate estimate of casualties, or even the cause of the attack. _ ”

“We need to go!” Lena is by far the most animated one out of all of them, “we have to help!”

“We don’t have to do  _ jack _ ,” Jesse counters.

“We’re not exactly officially sanctioned peacekeepers anymore,” Angela adds, absentmindedly twirling a strand of hair around her index finger, eyes wide as she glares at the projection, the look of her making it obvious she’d rather do the exact opposite of what she’s saying. “Showing up in full gear out of nowhere might arouse  _ some  _ suspicion.”

“Then we go in quietly!” Lena loses nothing of her telltale drive, “hell, I go in alone, I’m quick, they won’t even know I’m there!”

“There now, nobody’s going  _ anywhere _ alone,” protests Reinhardt.

“It’s risky to break cover now,” Genji says, “but we should at least try and find out who hailed us. Who knows.”

“Or we just sit right here and let  _ the actual authorities _ do their job,” Torbjorn groans.

And therein lies the problem - the friction that prevents them from getting any actual work done. They are disorganized, erratic at best, and most importantly, they don’t function as a unit, not anymore. Oh, they might like each other well enough, but they still are only individuals who happen to have found themselves in the same spot at the same time, but neither of them is willing to relinquish control, or rally behind someone else’s opinion.

“Alright, you know what,” Jesse sighs, having all but chewed his unlit cigar into a pulp, “that’s enough.”

Mysteriously, it actually works, people turning his way and waiting for what he has to say, and he’s all but forgotten what an uncomfortable position that is to find oneself in.

“We go in, quick and quiet,” he offers, “I take the car, take the long way around past the shore. We  _ only _ take a look at what’s going on, I buy some cigars, and we go back home. I’ve got three extra seats, who’s with me? Genji? Wanna make sure your brother isn’t the one blowing up buildings?”

“Not exactly his style,” Genji scoffs fondly, “but alright. I’ll go.”

“I’m going, too,” Lena says firmly,  _ not up for discussion. _ Brigitte looks like she might want to join her, too, but one swift exchange of glares between her and Torbjorn puts those hopes to rest.

“Just the three of us, then?” McCree looks around the room.

“Actually, I think I’d like to accompany you as well,” Angela seems to have won a some sort of a silent battle with her own hesitation. “I’ll bring a quick response kit. You never know.”

“Nice, Doc. I don’t plan on sticking around too long,” Jesse turns to Winston.

“We’ll monitor you from here,” the ape nods, “Athena won’t be able to stay connected with you, the range isn’t that great yet, so you’ll be on your own.”

“I’d advise against unnecessary heroics,” Reinhardt adds.

“Believe me, I don’t really feel like getting my hands dirty tonight,” McCree sighs, “we’ll be back soon.”

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Angela smiles.

 

The truck is old and rusty, and the drive long, but McCree doesn’t particularly mind - he’s in no rush, and if they are to appear as innocuous as Winston would like them to be, it’s better like this, slow and steady, no matter how unlikely and weird their little group might appear.

They do make a stop by the hailing tower, Genji scaling it, quick like a cat, returning with even more questions than before. Unanimously, they agree to come back in daylight, and with the proper tech to actually learn more - Jesse himself will be happy to leave that task to those of their group who actually understand this stuff - and they continue on towards the glowing cauldron of the city on the horizon.

Out of the four of them, Lena is the most agitated one, no doubt ready to forgo the car completely and just zoom towards Gibraltar propelled by her chronal accelerator alone, so ready to help, to fight, to  _ do something. _ Jesse never spent a whole lot of time working with her... before, as she only joined towards the very end, and he thinks maybe that’s why she’s kept all of this excitement, this drive. As far as he’s concerned, well, he was only half kidding when he said he was merely interested in buying some cigars and going right back to bed.

They enter the actual city itself at the docks, making it appear that they’ve driven here from the exact opposite direction than where the base lies, and the closer they are to the center, the more it becomes obvious that something  _ is _ stirring up - there are far more cars speeding  _ away _ from the downtown area, than there are going in the same direction as them, and the wailing of sirens, be it police or the fire department, is a constant background noise.

“Don’t know about you, but I sure don’t remember this city as well as I used to,” Jesse grumbles, finding a parking spot for the truck a little ways away from the commotion of the main roads. “I say we do this the usual way - you two on quick recon, while the Doc and I drive in a bit further. We stay in contact, see where the smoke leads us. That sound about right to everyone?”

He despises it down to his bones, giving any sort of orders, but, well, this isn’t a mission, and he isn’t a commander, by any means. Splitting up might be the stupidest thing to do right now, or it might pay off, he honestly has no way of knowing - but they do listen to him, Genji and Lena dashing off at a speed that’s only natural for them, while Angela climbs into the passenger seat, her heavy supply bag on her lap, looking about as undecided as McCree himself feels.

“I suppose we just... follow the noise?” she offers, and Jesse sighs, revving the car back up again.

“I suppose so, yeah.”

 

This is not a mission, and they don’t have a clear objective set out for them -  _ find out what’s going on _ is a very broad term, and the realization sets in quick. The city has changed a lot in the years that Jesse spent  _ buying cigars _ elsewhere, and he barely recalls the layout - he navigates past loud boulevards, teeming with nightlife, a chaos of neons and noise, seemingly undisturbed by whatever is going on - they do catch a news broadcast on a TV in the window of some pub, confirming action in the financial district, and Genji agrees, calling them only moments after.

“We’ve got a fire, an evacuated block. Lots of local authorities. We’re trying to get in from above. Do you see a big glass skyscraper, a broken holo screen on top, flashing green and blue?”

“Nah, we have no vantage points here. But I do see a, uh,  _ Financial District this way _ type of thing.”

“Head our way, then. They’re cordoning off the streets, though, so you’ll probably have to ditch the car eventually.”

If he is at all concerned, or even registering this as anything beyond his usual exercise routine, his voice doesn’t show it, and Jesse can only imagine him hanging off the side of some building a hundred feet up in the air, easy as you please.

“Such is our luck,” he grumbles, “I don’t need to remind you not to engage anyone or anything.”

“I know. I’ll check in later.”

Angela sighs the second the call ends, curling up on herself, resorting to what Jesse thinks must be an unconscious fidget to help her think, or calm down - one golden lock wrapped around her index finger, only to unravel again, over and over.

“What’s eating you?” he asks, the car rattling and coughing down a broader street now, suggesting that they’re getting closer to the fancier part of the city.

“Oh, nothing,” she’s quick to dismiss him, although she seems to rethink that the very next second, “nothing at all, it’s just that... Well, this is it, isn’t it?”

“You’re gonna have to elaborate there, Doc.”

“I just mean,” she chuckles, clutching her bag closer, “well, look at us. You’re driving with, what, two beers in you, technically I’m not even authorized to perform medicine in this country... We might as well be out for groceries.”

“Hey, I still wanna buy those cigars.”

“Yes, and we’re awfully short on anything even resembling a vegetable, but  _ my point is, _ ” she speaks up louder over his barked laughter, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, “this is ridiculous. How are we ever going to build back from this?”

He’s silent after that, for a long time, and maybe she isn’t even expecting an answer.

“Well, there’s no telling we ever will,” he finally decides, and mirrored in her eyes, he sees the same doubts, the same unsteady sort of agitation that’s been gnawing at him all this time. He offers what he hopes might be a somewhat encouraging smile.

“But I figure as long as no one’s stopping us, we can at least give it a shot.”

Silence reigns among them again after that, for quite some time, McCree concentrating on driving, while Angela rests her head on the car window, eyes unfocused as the lights of the city blur by.

“We do need to buy some vegetables, though,” she concedes at last, and Jesse laughs some more.

“Damn, if you insist. Cigars, too, though.”

“Well, they’re your lungs. Or what’s left of them, anyway.”

“Very nice, Doc.”

“Keep your eyes on the road, you.”

 

-

 

He watches the truck from a safe enough distance, incredulously so -  _ this _ is the ever so noble cause that his brother would have him join? The side he thinks Hanzo would benefit from picking? They are indistinguishable from all the other generic mercenary groups he has come in contact with in these past months, years - less organized than the worst of them, too.

Hanzo follows the rattling of the ancient vehicle anyway, from a safe distance - he has a vague idea of where his brother might be, but he doesn’t want another botched entendre, another face-off that ends with either or both of them more bitter than before. In fact, he is not yet quite sure  _ what _ exactly he expects from... all this, but the opportunity to catch his breath, restock and rethink his approach, was over before he could ever really seize it. The city that was supposed to be his refuge, offered nothing but turmoil and streets, entire blocks, shutting down one by one. Where Hanzo wanted a quiet, cheap hostel room away from the center, he ran headfirst into yet more trouble, and he thinks, in a way, it serves him right.

The sirens are audible here, again, and the fire - fires? - is a visible orange-gold glow reflecting off the glass of the buildings here, and, impossible for the occupants of the truck to see, a police barricade is diverting all traffic from the area not two streets away. They ditch the truck at an abandoned corner, though, thinking further ahead than Hanzo would give them credit for, and he is forced to duck lightning-quick as the man - McCree - shoots an inquisitive look up above, where Hanzo has been using the rooftops to make his progress smoother... As if he knows  _ exactly _ where to look.

Well, he  _ has _ seen the man in a fight, and did spend several hours stuck in a car with him and Genji, listening to them discussing the specifics of their mission, and he does admit that there might be something more to his ridiculous visage than immediately meets the eye - he keeps to the roofs as much as possible, following McCree and the woman as they hurry through the streets towards the unknown source of all the commotion, making sure to never lose them from his sight for more than the blink of an eye.

“What the hell is that?” McCree’s voice is audible then, mirroring Hanzo’s own ruminations - upon closer inspection, that which he first classified as the glow of a distant fire, appears to be something else entirely, flickering and unstable. Artificial.

He hears it then, and so do his unwitting companions on the ground - sustained gunfire, and the unmistakable crackle of something large collapsing. The two down below seem to have the same idea as him, breaking off into a run, and Hanzo notices in a flash the glint of McCree’s gun, drawn and ready now.

“Shit,  _ what?! _ ” the man shouts into what must be a comm device connecting him to Genji, “how the hell did that get here? Stay away from it!”

“What? What is it?” the woman demands.

“An omnic - like, a battle unit going rogue. Yeah, don’t look at me! Looks like an old OR type, Genji says.”

Hanzo can barely make out the words now - he’s going to have to follow on the street level soon, these buildings are not suited for quick movement anymore, too tall, too smooth.

“How is that possible?” he hears the woman ask frantically, and doesn’t catch the reply anymore, because they duck a corner, and his path is suddenly closed off - it’s either a sharp drop, or a delay, finding a new route.

“Shit,” he mutters, scouting his surroundings for a different path.

The goal of their journey is the same, anyway, and Hanzo isn’t quite ready yet to give up the luxury of his vantage point - he circles back, away from the inconvenient skyscraper blocking his progress, to lower roofs and more options for smooth movement, resuming his dash toward the source of all the noise with only a minimal delay. The only thing that gives him pause is the occasional light in a window - there are still people here. Is not causing an uproar really more important than protecting them, for whoever runs this show?

_ A battle unit going rogue... _ There’s no telling how much the members of the hastily reformed Overwatch know, but he has seen enough to determine that this is not an accident, nor is it the first time, the first city, to deal with this sort of thing. Back in Hanamura, he thought perhaps Genji was following the same leads he himself was interested in - and during his pursuit of his brother, halfway across the world all the way to Europe, Hanzo has been observing the same occurrences popping up seemingly everywhere.

An AI in a dairy factory, of all things, going rogue for the span of around one afternoon, flooding the employee stations with some sort of a toxin. The derelict model of a first generation omnic patrol guard suddenly coming alive in a museum somewhere in Finland in the middle of the night, and attacking nothing but thin air for the entirety of about two minutes, before its limited battery ran out. The incident in Cairo, so very well buried, and another one in Denmark.

The story remains the same, no matter how diligent the local authorities always are in twisting in, presenting a digestible version of it to the public - something, or more likely  _ someone _ , is reanimating long fallen omnic units, from before the war, from before the first Breath of Life, and Hanzo and his contacts would very much like to know how all that ties in with the rumors he himself is more interested in, and means to share with his brother as soon as possible.

Speaking of...

He recognizes the quick flash of green, nothing but a flicker of light, like a firefly leading him in the right direction, and he speeds up, until he is able to scale a rusting water tower atop a building, and get an overview of the situation below.

There is indeed a fire after all, the unfortunate and inevitable side effect of one side of an entire building caving in - the smoke rises high in heavy clouds, and rolls down the street, tinted red and blue with the changing lights of the numerous sirens, obscuring his view too much. People seem to be hurrying  _ away _ from what he assumes is the blast site, inaudible shouted orders sending entire groups of policemen ahead to some sort of a plaza obscured from Hanzo’s view right now, but easily accessible from above... There.

“Genji,” he exhales, and follows.

 

His brother has the common sense to keep to the roofs himself, reluctant to engage anyone below, the lithe frame of him only visible because Hanzo knows where to look - lurking above the chaos, his sword drawn, visible even at this distance, and close by, a teammate, if his eyes aren’t deceiving him. And... yes, there, keeping a healthy distance from the authorities as well, a shape familiar in its utter lack of purpose - Hanzo hardly thinks he would be lucky enough to see  _ another _ grown man with a distinctively shaped hat on his head and a sixshooter gun in his hand peeking around corners.

It happens quickly, and he’s unable to determine what  _ actually _ happened, not at this distance - one second, a deceptive quiet reigns, and then, another explosion shatters yet more of the half destroyed building, and suddenly, there are considerably more people running  _ away _ from the heart of the chaos, rather than toward it.

It soon becomes obvious why - it is uncomfortably reminiscent of the scenes from all the wartime videos, even those one might see these days, where omnic activity has been at an all-time high, South Korea, the Russian front... Needless to say, there isn’t  _ one _ battle unit, but several of them, marching side by side in a terrifyingly competent formation, shooting at anything that moves, and it’s obvious that none of them quite came equipped for this.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hanzo sees the gleam of an approaching helicopter, hopefully this will be contained before... But no. No, of course.  _ Of course _ his brother must be the one to  _ act. _

“Reckless,” Hanzo hisses, drawing his bow, following the quick dash of Genji and his teammate - who seems to simply  _ disappear _ at some point, only to turn up flanking the omnics, delivering a salvo of seemingly highly ineffectual gunfire, that really only succeeds at drawing their attention for a short amount of time.... Enough for Genji to come in.

“How -  _ idiot, _ ” Hanzo complains, the tip of his arrow following his brother’s quick but largely erratic movements.

He does succeed at engaging one of the four omnics, forcing it to turn around to intercept him and thus drawing it away from its group, but what is his sword against the twin machine guns hoisted on the unit’s shoulders, no matter how outdated? Hanzo doesn’t like those odds.

His arrow hits its mark precisely, the omnic staggering forth, an array of sparks announcing a successful shot, and Genji stops for a second, looking, searching for Hanzo, but fortunately he does have enough wherewithal about him to use the opening for what it is, and fight.

So do the others, too, the unnaturally fast child by Genji’s side, and indeed McCree himself, joining the fight from the other side of the street, aiming to scatter the omnics’ attention between them to single them out, ceasing to pay any mind to the local police, who for their part do not seem to be in much of a shape to help.

“Don’t let them...” Hanzo mutters suggestions none of them can hear, as he himself moves toward yet another better vantage point, fingertips dancing over the arrows in his quiver, quickly searching for the ridged surface of a scattering tip.

McCree is shouting something at the largely useless police force trying to figure out what to do, while Genji and the other agent are too busy dodging gunfire, and none of them can see it as well as he can, but he is convinced they realize it anyway - if they let the fight leave this block, this street even, there will be much more at stake than the stability of one or two buildings. And there isn’t enough room for Hanzo to... No, not here.

“Keep them going that way! Close off the damn street!” McCree’s voice echoes over the noise, and Hanzo sees the blonde woman trying to snap some sense into the paralyzed policemen, getting them to redirect the cordons they’d all passed a couple of streets away.

The omnics stop for no one, Genji and his teammate having succeeded at taking one down, and splitting the rest. But they might be even more deadly back to back, two of them headed to where McCree and Hanzo’s brother are ducked behind a corner, frantically trying to come up with a new strategy on their feet, while one unit marches slowly, but surely towards the chaotic gathering of people on the other side of the street.

Hanzo only has two explosive arrows left, and no resources to construct others, but he will sacrifice one for this, he decides. He lines up his shot well, his line of sight steady enough, his target moving slow enough...

The tip of his arrow instinctively moves before his brain can catch up and assess what just happened, the ground all but shaking below their feet. The source of it becomes obvious soon, and  _ what _ is going on in this city again?! A Bastion unit, in the middle of what he’s certain is a strictly financial district?

He fires at it instead, stopping it from transforming into its turret mode for a precious couple of seconds, searching for the source of its annoyance, never to see him, never to - alright, that rocket headed his way, fired almost lazily, might prove him wrong.

He leaps off the roof just in time, the explosion too close for comfort, sending him staggering forward, before he regains his footing and keeps to the ground - looks like he’ll be joining the others, whether he likes it or not.

The barrage of gunfire gains a deeper, relentless tone, as the Bastion unit finishes its transformation, its turret firing at the closest targets it can find, which is the group of people, policemen and firemen running for cover. Hanzo rushes forth, sparing a glance to the sky - surely local authorities will come to diffuse the situation soon? They can’t possibly think to rely on a handful of passers-by who only so happen to have some weapons on them.

He showers the two units advancing on his brother an McCree with an array of arrows mainly meant to disturb, before ducking a corner to save his own hide, hoping he’s managed to buy the others at least a second’s opening. He hears the telltale hiss of a sword in action, rending metal, and he thinks,  _ good. _

“Genji!”

Or alternatively, not good.

His brother’s body lands on the hood of a nearby car, tossed like a ragdoll, a different kind of screech of metal, and Hanzo abandons his climb upward, assessing. One breath, two, and Genji is getting back up, but not quick enough - showered in laser fire, he barely manages to slide to the ground behind the wrecked car, his entire body coiled, ready to spring... Before he sees Hanzo.

“Brother...”

“Go!” Hanzo urges him, sending one arrow in the general direction of the attacking omnic’s head, “ _ go! _ ”

Predictably, that gains the omnic’s attention, and gains Hanzo the wonderful gift of the unit’s fire pointed at  _ him _ now, but Genji uses the chance to skid around the back of the car and assault the omnic from behind, his blade quicker than lightning, slicing, incapacitating.

_ Good. _

The affirmation that passes between them, the satisfaction of the well executed, is nothing but a momentary glance, before Genji is dashing back to the open street, back towards the danger. Does he expect Hanzo to follow? Has he always expected him to?

A beat, a breath, and Hanzo does, of course he does, already firing before he can truly discern where his next target is - the noise it makes is indication enough.

“Get to cover, you idiot!”

He doesn’t know where McCree is shouting from, but the second he turns to look, is the second he should have used to get away - this rocket almost buries him under a car, his ears ringing as he scrabbles for purchase, the soles of his shoes skidding on concrete as he hurries to the relative safety of the nearest wall, corner, anything. A flash of green, and his brother is moving past him like a bird in flight, drawing his sword backwards in that same arc Hanzo saw once before, not so long ago...

His breath stops at the terrifying, familiar sight of the dragon being set free, pointed towards its prey, and danger or no danger, he stops in his tracks to watch, Genji lunging forward, still one more omnic in his way before he can get to the Bastion unit currently camping at the foot of the rubble that remains of the destroyed building, its fire fortunately directed away from them for the time being.

It happens as if in suspended time, as if he watches the events unfold before his eyes in stationery pictures someone presents to him - Genji utterly obliterating the omnic before them in only a handful of slashes, wasting no time to gloat, moving towards the Bastion through an entirely empty, open street, too open for Hanzo’s tastes...

“Hey there!” McCree running after Genji, sparing a vastly ridiculous grin for Hanzo,  _ fancy seeing you here!, _ only for the two of them to end up ducking behind the same pillar, this explosion most definitely too close.

The stupefying realization that his brother is suddenly nowhere to be seen.

The Bastion abandoning its assault on the other side of the street for good, almost humanoid now in its recon configuration, marching towards them.

A figure crumpled on the ground, slowly coming to - too slowly.

Genji barely deflecting the laser bullets, hit from behind when he attempts a hasty escape.

Hanzo reaching for an arrow, standing up tall, cover be damned, his blood coursing quicker through his veins, a familiar bitter tinge on his tongue, the itching tension in his arms as he calls on his own dragons to wake, to go forth...

Genji succeeding at one last thrust with his sword, the omnic momentarily surprised, the perfect targets,  _ go, consume, now- _

McCree’s arm right next to his face, the glimmer of his gun like a wink meant only for Hanzo to see, a gunshot that continues ringing in his ears for ages to come, and then - silence. The hunger of the dragons unsated, because their enemy is no more.

His feet carrying him forward without really thinking about it, without really thinking about anything beyond his brother’s name on his tongue.

 

He lies motionless on the ground, a blackened gash across his back where his armor didn’t quite weather the brunt of the gunfire, and Hanzo is battling his own half-paralyzed limbs to keep moving, to get to him, to see.

He is lost, thoroughly lost, when faced with this - there should not be sparks, and there should not be a fluid that is decidedly  _ not _ blood oozing out of the cracks in the armor, he gathers as much, but there is also no face for him to look into, no visible eyes to search for some sort of an affirmation, again,  _ perhaps if you stopped worrying about me for  _ one second,  _ Hanzo, you’d see that I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself... _

“Genji? Fuck, let me see-”

“Get away!”

That reaction is entirely unnatural, Hanzo realizes, but McCree still recoils, raising his hands in a gesture of peace.

“Easy, now. I’m sure it’s not too serious, this guy could withstand a car crash, right, Genji? ...Right?”

Genji produces a tiny whimper, attempting to roll over, and Hanzo pays no mind to the situation around them anymore, his bow forgotten on the ground, his hands stuck somewhere halfway to his brother’s face, and they are not shaking only because Hanzo wills them with all his might not to.

“Han-zo,” Genji slurs, heaving himself up on one elbow, and the smile, however delirious, is audible in his voice. “You came back.”

“Genji, what happened - it’s fine, I’m a doctor! Let me!”

The blonde woman is on her knees next to him, and he only realizes he lashed out at her as well  _ after _ she pushes him away, aided by McCree.

“It’s fine, let her.”

“Alright, no more hostiles in the area, but we really need to - Genji! What happened?!”

That’s the last member of their team, the youngest one, appearing, quite literally, in a flash by their side.

“He’s gonna be alright, but we need to scram, right now,” McCree decides, “you coming or what?”

It takes Hanzo impossibly long to realize that that question is aimed at him, and he stares at the man wordlessly, incapable of discerning...

“Hanzo...”

That’s Genji again, and his voice might only be in Hanzo’s mind, but it’s quite enough.

“Come on, man, make a decision, we’re leaving right  _ now, _ ” McCree orders, already getting to his feet and picking Genji up according to the doctor’s suggestions, ever so gingerly, Hanzo’s brother suddenly appearing very small in his arms.

“More police are on their way,” the younger woman announces, “we shouldn’t linger. Car nearby?”

“Couple of corners,” McCree nods, “let’s move.”

Hanzo looks from them, to the completely destroyed street that was the setting of the unplanned showdown... to Genji’s ruined body. It wouldn’t take any effort at all to slip away in the commotion and disappear to a part of the city so distant it will only be learning about the incident in tomorrow’s news, but... No.

No, if this is how it must be, then who is he to second-guess this strange set of coincidences that has brought Genji and him back together so soon?

He grabs his bow, counts his arrows, and follows.

 

-

 

The pain is searing hot and debilitating as the shotgun pellets slice through his flesh and make a mess of his lower back, but he already knows it will pass soon - it’s so very far from his main concern at the moment anyway.

His senses are screaming at him to  _ scram, get away, _ but Jack is incapable of listening to them - always has been, after all, whenever it came to protecting his blind spot from the very people he’d once trusted to watch out for it in his stead.

_ Always rushing in. I know your every move before you even make it. Always have, always will. _

The panic is setting in, meaningless and inconvenient, but impossible to chase away, reigning over his very movements -  _ it can’t be. It can’t be. _ And yet -  _ of course it is. _

“ _ I’ve been looking for you since Switzerland. _ ”

He wants to scream. The ridiculous, unbelievable fucking  _ irony _ of all of this - this is what he wanted. This is who he wanted to find, and yet... And yet not  _ what _ he wanted to find.  _ Me too, _ he wants to yell at the ghost,  _ me too. _ But turning around and actually  _ seeing, _ confirming what he fears the most, is too much to bear.

_ This is how it should have been. _

And perhaps he’s right. The two of them trying to find their footing on the crumbling remnants of their entire world, were faced with a choice, the very last one, back then, and they should have made it together, he knows that now. But there isn’t enough life in him, quite literally, his voice not working for him when he needs it most, his heart, his limbs, paralyzed.

If it is to end now, long overdue, then yes, it’s better than nothing. Better than not knowing, and spending the rest of his leased time merely searching.

He waits for a shot that never comes - or rather, doesn’t come from the massive shotgun that has him at its mercy. No, instead he hears the viscerally familiar thunderclap of a sniper rifle finding its target, and then another one, more subdued, and his body is on fire again, but for entirely different reasons.

_ The pain is gone, _ and there is only one person he has ever known who is capable of taking pain away as swiftly and precisely as dealing it. And it truly is ironic, he thinks, scrambling to his feet with some hardship still, that the three of them should be reunited like this, all of them searching for one another all this time, neither of them apparently wavering in their conviction that they would eventually succeed. Neither of them ever succumbing to the desolate, maddening belief that they might have been abandoned, left to battle the world alone.

But right now, of course, as it always has been, they end up battling each other.

“ _ Get in there, Jack! _ ” her shout echoes, and it, more successfully than the biotic solution now coursing through his veins, succeeds at reanimating him - he throws the first punch, and the coalescing black meets him step for step. The ghost wears a mask of white,  _ the _ mask of white, and if Jack weren’t so preoccupied with staying alive, he’d start connecting all the dots quicker.

There was always a part of him that hoped,  _ wanted _ to believe, that man behind Gabriel’s old callsign was just some mercenary soldier with a particularly bad sense of humor, but no, of course not.  _ You’d never let anyone do that, would you. _

He is lucky, he thinks, that he never gets to see Gabriel’s face - would he see the same emptiness, the same desperate longing to be anywhere but here, mirrored in his features, or what’s left of them?

And he never could deal his blows decisively when it came to Gabriel - he is overpowered soon, his opponent’s blows finding the one weak spot Jack has always kept around, exacerbated now by the gunshot wound, the tendrils of numb ache exploding into searing, blinding pain once again, and Jack goes down, the red of his visor crackling with the impact... And down he stays.

Another precision shot keeps the Reaper from advancing, he registers as much, but beyond that, his head is a chaotically spinning carousel, emotions warring with physical sensations, and if he is allowed a couple more seconds of staying alive, he will use them to calm that cacophony to the best of his ability.

When he finally gathers himself up at least a bit, there is no sign of the ghost, no sign of the mask of white - just red dust swirling up in lazy spirals, and the shrouded figure of Ana Amari. Jack has traveled too far, risked too much, doubted too long, to not acknowledge her now.

“For a second there I was worried you really were going to kill me,” he exhales, hoarse and tired, and she takes her time to respond - kneeling on the ground, face turned upward, she appears almost in shock. But then again, the Reaper decided not to finish the job, left them both alive, and that is surprise enough.

“Maybe I should have,” she sighs, “after what you pulled. I had this place staked out for days, before you came and ruined everything. You’d better have a good reason.”

_ Come find me. Look for the Shrike, below the Eye of Horus. There's still work to do. _

Her voice - that alone, so familiar and yet so much older, so comforting in its harsh edges - succeeds at piercing the very last of his defenses, and his shoulders sag, all leftover energy leaking out of him. The simple act of getting up to his feet seems insurmountable now, so he simply sits there, his lower back pulsating with the promise of a nasty recovery to come.

“I was looking for you,” he confesses, pulling his visor off, and his faulty vision bestows upon him the rare blessing of seeing clearly, just this once. Ana is looking at him with one healthy eye, the other one behind a patch, and her features, although much older -  _ we’ve both aged two decades in the past six years, haven’t we _ \- are unchanged. There is a gentleness behind her strict frown that he doesn’t think he deserves, but decides to appeal to anyway.

“I thought you were dead.”

“As the world thought  _ you _ were,” she scoffs, somewhat fondly, “but I saw the news reports.  _ 76, _ on the back of your jacket? Come on, Jack. You’re so hardheaded you wouldn’t know to die.”

“This is my war, Ana,” he declares, “Clearly you’ve given it up. Why didn’t you contact me sooner? Why did you let everyone believe you were dead and gone?”

There’s anger in the firm angle of her jaw then, the ancient, bitter kind, and she regards him without a hint of compassion.

“You have no idea,” she says slowly, “no idea what I went through. I woke up in a hospital weeks after Switzerland. Weeks, but it might as well have been decades. I felt I’d failed everyone. I’d failed you. I’d failed-” a gesture towards the wind, as if the breeze itself had carried away the decaying remnants of what once was their partner, “him. I decided there and then, it would be better if I remained a ghost. I don’t care about your war, Jack - but I do care about you. You still need someone to watch your back, that much is clear. You need me.”

And he finds that, as always, it’s very difficult to disagree with her.

She navigates the city with a practiced ease - there are uniformed officers they avoid, and those they do not, corners they turn only to find themselves in narrow back alleys, mingling with the mass of loud merchants and common folk, sticking to the shadows, heading god knows where. Jack can do nothing but follow, his jacket stowed in his duffel the second they stop by the spot where he’d stashed his things earlier - Ana merely looks on with something akin to mild disappointment as he packs, and leads him onward.

They barely speak to each other that entire time, until they’re sitting in a dubiously unmarked truck, headed outside the city.

“Hakim’s only a tiny piece of a huge puzzle,” Ana offers, “but you must know that yourself. Of all the people who could have even caught that message, I didn’t expect  _ you _ to be the one to decipher it.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Jack smiles wryly, “I didn’t.”

“How do you mean?” she takes her eyes off the endless expanse of the desert spreading ahead of them.

“I had... help,” he confesses, “someone  _ led me _ to that Ecopoint. Decoded your message for me. Served up all the answers on a silver platter.  _ Someone’s _ been nattering in my ear this entire time.”

“What? Who?”

“Small purple skull mean anything to you?”

“Can’t say that it does. That’s all you know?”

“So far, yeah. They’ve been popping up pretty randomly. Haven’t contacted me since I arrived here. Who knows.”

“And you don’t find that just a little bit alarming?” she laughs.

“Well, they led me to you,” he shrugs, and her smile gains a softer edge, before she shakes her head in disbelief.

“Can’t help but feel like it used to be easier, this.”

He sighs raggedly, squirming for at least a semblance of comfort in the truck’s old ruined seat.

“You’re telling me.”

The darkness here is so absolute that he barely even recognizes they’re approaching rockier terrain. At some point Ana doesn’t force the truck to struggle anymore, and they trudge onward on foot - not a straightforward path either, by any means, but it’s obvious she takes every precaution to avoid being followed.

They climb up a steep hill, sand sliding from under them, making the trek twice as exhausting, until they happen upon a dusty but relatively solid plateau, and Jack’s visor picks up on their destination much better than his eyes ever could have.

“It’s a genuine Necropolis,” Ana explains, leading him past half-derelict pillars and carved stone, “not like one of those fake holo projections you get in the museums. But it’s too far out of the city to be a tourist attraction, so it’s been left like this for ages now. Just old stone and older bones.”

“Huh,” Jack comments eloquently.

Her entire world seems to be comprised of a small nook by a broad ancient staircase, a nest of blankets and books, and the surrounding tech - bare basics, clearly set up in a way that will allow for a quick getaway whenever necessary. She brews them tea, and Jack thinks he recognizes the small tin kettle, even though it cannot possibly be the same one from way back when. Nothing remains the same, and yet, it’s all so very familiar.

“How long have you been here?” he asks, the two of them sitting in her vantage point at the edge of the crevasse like they’ve just come here to stargaze, both her rifle poised to scout the area and the travel-sized recon screen nothing but backdrop.

“A while,” she shrugs, “there’s always something that needs taken care of out there. You know how it is.”

“Is Fareeha...”

“Out there,” she nods, although she visibly tenses up. “Security Chief at Helix. Doing well for herself.”

“How  _ well _ can you really do at Helix, though?”

“I know.”

There is a particular kind of silence that one may only experience when surrounded by vast empty spaces, and even though there are still things left unsaid, Jack revels in it - there’s always  _ something _ , otherwise, when one is on the move. The hubbub of cities, the rush of uncertainty, the persistent, nagging doubt... Here, it’s as if all time has come to a halt. It’s as if he himself, and perhaps Ana too, has been heading towards this place all along. He’s not entirely sure yet, if he will be able to allow himself to take a break, catch his breath, but what else is there to do, really?

She speaks of Fareeha only reluctantly - he doesn’t ask her why she hasn’t contacted her, and Ana herself doesn’t seem to have a definitive answer for that - but it’s obvious that she means to stay close.  _ That _ is Ana’s war, perhaps, in a way. She claims she isn’t interested in whatever’s been brewing on that part of the horizon where only the most seasoned ones of them can see, and yet here she is, keeping a watchful eye and protecting people from afar, just like she’s always done.

And besides, they  _ are _ both looking in the same direction right now, and that haunted mask of eggshell white seems to be glaring directly back at them.

“He’s become easier to track, lately,” Ana points out, bringing up her files on the Reaper, Jack and her having exchanged the magnificent view of the night sky for the considerably warmer indoors.

“Has he,” Jack huffs, leaning forward to get a good look at one particularly blurry screenshot of this or that security camera recording - it doesn’t escape him, the way her gaze travels to his scars, visible fully now without the protective layer of the visor, but the agreement is unspoken in this case.  _ Dwelling _ doesn’t help anything.

“In a way,” she nods. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, he still takes special care not to be spotted anywhere... commercial, but considering his track record, it’s almost as if he’s getting reckless. Talon in turn is getting louder, so those two might be related for obvious reasons, but I rather think he  _ wants _ to be... seen...”

“What is it?” he inclines his head, and she doesn’t respond right away - only stares into space for a beat or two, her lips moving soundlessly.

“I saw his face, Jack,” she confesses, and they might be surrounded by several space heaters to fend off the cold of the desert at night, but they don’t do much for the chill that shoots up his spine. “I saw his  _ face. _ He let me see him. He never takes that damn mask off...”

“Ana,” he pleads with her, incapable of finishing the rest of the sentence - incapable of asking the one question he can’t decide if he wants the answer to.

“It was him,” she sighs, “of course it was. I didn’t doubt I would find him, but still, seeing for myself...”

_ How far gone is he? _ Jack wants to ask.  _ Did you really recognize him, or did you only see a husk, wearing the face of someone we once knew? _ And a quieter, more scared and uncertain part of him, the one he rarely ever allows to be acknowledged, let alone hurt:  _ Is there any helping him? _

Because they are going to have to help him - whether that means finding him once more and ripping that mask off for good, to finally ask the questions they’ve each been carrying with them for years, or just putting him into the ground, they will end up together, one last time.

That night, Ana and him sit side by side for a long time, and they talk about anything and everything - catching up, speculating, marvelling at having stayed alive this long... But mostly avoiding stating the inevitable. The two of them, just like the dust and bones and ancient stone surrounding them, just like the man under the mask, are standing right now on the precipice of all that as antediluvian, and yet, the present doesn’t seem to be finished with them just yet.

They are presumed dead and holed up in a  _ Necropolis _ , quite literally chasing ghosts, and halfway across the world, someone is trying to bring the idea of what they once built back to life, and Jack doesn’t know about Ana or all the rest of them, but to him, the irony in all this is fucking overwhelming.

He almost wishes for the mysterious purple calavera to pop up out of nowhere on one of Ana’s screens, offer some explanation or resolution, but it never does - as if it could ever be that easy. No, he sits alone, long after Ana has gone to sleep, incapable of doing the same himself. He doesn’t quite go outside, but he does find a spot at the bottom of one of the staircases interconnecting the underground parts of the Necropolis, where a small square of the sky can still be seen, and with it, the stars.

In his hands, he clutches a mug of tea, long gone cold, and his visor lays beside him - he can’t really enjoy the view fully without it, but it doesn’t matter.  _ I saw his face. _

His duffel slouches close by, unopened and still packed - he’s not  _ that _ comfortable with this arrangement yet - but his hand only needs to dive in once, to find what he’s looking for. He looks back over his shoulder,  _ yeah, the ghosts of  _ all _ your old friends are going to pick this exact moment to come haunt you just to laugh at you, _ then shakes his head at his own stupidity, and forces the old battered tobacco can open.

Any sort of sentiment being a weakness is the one thing one should take away from the kind of life he’s led, but in his heart of hearts, he disagrees - reminding oneself of what once was can serve as quite a potent fuel for his particular brand of sore, stale anger. Ana has her tiny holo of her daughter as a child, to remind her of the things she means to protect, and Jack has... this.

He ignores the other contents of the can, and lifts the dog tags to his face, their thin, smooth chain sliding down his forearm. The metal remains the same after all this time, strangely pristine and smooth, and yet the letters are almost impossible to make out. Might also be on account of his shitty vision in general, but still.

“‘Time has come to return these, it seems,” he mutters to himself, and half expects the surrounding darkness to coalesce into the Reaper, into Gabriel, but it never does.

No,  _ waiting _ for the rightful owner of those two tiny metal plates in his hand to come claim them, would be useless. If he is to finish this, Jack is going to have to be the one to go out there, find him, and after he’s done asking some questions, and landing some hits, he will return these, because finish it, he must.

As if in agreement, the night turns even colder as the wind picks up, bringing with it stinging shards of sand, and the Necropolis slumbers at last, nothing but another shapeless mound in the desert, hidden away from the prying eyes of the city nearby, nothing but a testament to the dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oooh boy, this fic took one long break, and I'm sorry for that. In fact my writing in general took a long break that I wasn't able to break out from for quite some time, but I'm doing better now. I can't believe it took me tens of thousands of words to get to the scene I was looking forward to writing, which was Jack and Gabriel's and Ana's showdown. I added to the comic dialogue a bit to make it flow differently, but other than that I'm glad I managed to weave something actually canon into the fic lmao  
> Anyway I definitely mean to continue this tangled mess of POVs and storylines, and I hope it's fun for you guys as well. I even set up [blog for this fic](https://anecdocheverse.tumblr.com/) to spice things up a little bit! I'd love to hear what you thought of the chapter!


End file.
